Our trip is closely coming to a close. We've spent our last weeks in the Santa Cruz region of Bolivia. Unfortunately, Wilson was sick with food poisoning again last week (and it wasn't my fault this time), so much of his time (and mine) was in a hotel watching TV and surfing the Internet.
There was not much to do in Santa Cruz other than visit a small, local zoo, a Dinosaur Park (with footprints of dinosaurs) and Biocentro Guembe – a park and resort with exotic plants, butterflies and animals. Our last days were spent in Samaipata – about 3 hours outside of Santa Cruz.
In Samaipata, we stayed in La Posada del Sol, a nice little bed and breakfast. We visited El Fuerte, a pre-colombian archaeological site built by three different cultures including the Chanes, Incas and Spaniards, and some waterfalls known as “Las Cuevas” and a little zoo in town. I must say the highlight of this trip was the zoo, a couple miles outside of the main plaza of Samaipata. According to a Swiss couple who was volunteering at this zoo, the owner is a handicapped Swiss lady (which we witnessed) that had decided to move to Bolivia because she wanted to keep a monkey she owned in Switzerland (not sure how much of this is true since it was only their third day on the job). Over the years, locals started dropping off animals they'd found or didn't want to her. And now, seven years later, she has a near-zoo in her backyard. Her animals ranged from a cage of monkeys to birds, pigs, rats, a small leopard-looking cat, deer, sheep and a biting watch goose (that kept biting Wilson's shoe).
Our favorite animals was Chichi, a pet monkey that wrapped herself around guests that first arrive at the zoo. She kind of reminded me of a dog (who wrapped herself around you) because as soon as we got there, she climbed onto each of our shoulders and licked us continuously like a dog. We had walked about 2.5 km to the zoo so we were pretty salty by then. We even toured the zoo with her wrapped around our neck, licking us. She didn't get along with the other caged monkeys because she would appear stressed and make these squeaking noises when we'd walk near the cage. Our guide told us she just didn't get along with the other monkeys. We also spent a fair amount of time looking at the caged monkeys playing and having sex with one another. We witnessed two male monkeys taking turns copulating. One of my favorite monkeys was one that would rub his stomach to show he was hungry, all while munching on tomatoes and carrots.
Overall, that was the highlight of our last couple days. We will be flying out of Bolivia on Saturday, with an overnight layover in Miami. Although it's a bit sad to say good bye to our travels, I think we are both ready to come home to see our friends and family.
The wacky holiday Agnes and I had been waiting for finally took place last week and it didn't disappoint. La fiesta de La Cruz in Potosi, Bolivia begins with animal sacrifices every year in May, proceeds with the blessing of crosses for people who don't believe in God, and ends with raw fisted beatings and tear gas. And the entire time, peasants spend their waking moments drunk.
Taking place at the end of the harvest, the holiday is an unusual blend of pre-Colombian and Catholic symbolism, involving thanksgiving and sacrifice, though its most prominent features appear to be drinking, repetitive dance routines, and brawls. The folks who celebrate the festival in this way are very poor peasants in the northern portions of Potosi province. The land here, much of it at higher than 12,000 ft, yields little in terms of crops but tubers, beans and barley. Trees don't grow here and the salient feature in the landscape is of rocks and dust. Not surprisingly, they lack electricity and running water and live in mud huts.
We booked a trip with Koala Tours, which was the first group to make tourist inroads with the Macha community, where the largest celebrations and fights take place. As recently as eight years ago, when the tours first started, the festival continued to escape the attention of government authorities and tinkus, individual, one on one fights, often evolved into community versus community battles involving rocks, sticks, and other armaments. Parts of vanquished opponents were sometimes eaten raw in triumph by their victors, according to our guides. Since then, the authorities have deemed the festival illegal. Though resigned to the fact that they cannot stop the celebrations entirely, they send team a team of police to referee the fights and stop the one on one battles before someone suffers grievous harm. They also stop the group battles by lobbing tear gas canisters into the crowd.
Our tour started uneventfully on a brisk Saturday morning, when we joined our tour of roughly 25 happy tourists on our way to the community of Puruka, about five hours north of Potosi. As the community of 20 families is not used to tourists and does not have phones, our agency needed to negotiate on the spot for places to stay. This took about an hour, after the head of our agency, Wilbur, plied our hosts with coca leaves, cane alcohol, and of course cash. All the while, bystanders gazed at us blankly while a few drunken villagers harassed us and demanded money. Off the beaten track, the village hosts just the few tourists with our agency en route to the fiesta once a year. And to say our experience was un-touristy would be an understatement.
While occasionally, we've visited villages on treks to experience life with the locals, we are somehow blessed with toilets, good food and even running water, as villagers on trekking routes tend to have foreign visitors every week. In contrast, our village was a reminder of how shitty life must be to those who are very poor. Five of us stayed in a 10 by 15 foot mud hut with a perforated straw roof. The dirt floor was punctuated with field stones that jutted into every muscle of your body when lying down. And while it had sort of a camping indoors feel to it, it would have been far more enjoyable had it not been 30 degrees out.
Our family was not alerted in advance of our arrival, so we waited in the freezing cold without a fire waiting for some festive sort of entertainment, though absolutely nothing happened for about three hours. We were offered chicha, a foul slightly alcoholic brew made from boiling barley dough in water (the fermentation process for chicha used to involve women chewing the barley and spitting into a boiling pot). It's served in a dirty gourd or half a recycled coke bottle and looks like bubbly diarrhea. In any event, we sat around till around 11:30 before anything happened. Then, the villagers, who'd been just hanging around each other chatting and drinking chicha finally brought out the llamas for the kill. We had trouble interacting with them since only the children spoke Spanish. By that time, everyone but Agnes and I had gone to bed, which actually meant a few blankets spread over the rocky floor.
The ritual llama sacrifice was both brutal and uneventful. Two llama were tackled by couple guys each and had their necks slit by a third over a small rock. The poor animals struggled for about ten seconds before succumbing to their fate. Then the dancing and music started. Dancing, in this case, involved marching around the fire, changing direction, when they say, change direction, and then, when they say, dance in place, you march in place. It's a ritual dance that I'm sure took a wealth of creativity to come up with. Marching is an important feature of the dance because it would be otherwise easy to trip over the rocky terrain. The music consisted of a four note song played with flutes called hula hulas, made with either hollowed out sugar cane or bamboo. Each handmade instrument was out of tune in its own unique way, resulting in a cacophony that has probably evolved little from the first time it was played by a llama sacrificing band of Indians. In any event, we danced around the fire while one fellow smeared our faces with llama blood freshly squirted from the jugular of the departed llamas. This was supposed to be a blessing. Other than this, we paid very little attention to the animals. In the other two groups, one at least danced around the dead llamas, and the other got to eat the heart. Ours just lay off to the side like dirty socks.
The next morning, our hosts provided us with a breakfast of boiled yucca covered in sandy bits of dirt. I guess we sometimes take it for granted that our food is clean and free of soil, but in northern Potosi at least, all meals appear to have grindy bits of earth all over them. A bit later, they cooked us some potatoes and fava beans, also covered in dirt, as they had been buried with heated rocks underground. Fortunately, they also gave us some llama soup from the sacrifices the night before, which tasted quite good. Nearly a quarter of our tour had stomach issues by the end of the tour.
One thing worth mentioning is that I had been suffering from yet another bout of food poisoning from before the trip, which required an unusually high number of trips to relieve myself. Without running water or even any outhouse facilities, the villagers just pee and crap in the fields. And while this doesn't bother me in the least (I'd rather squat in an open field any day than have to endure the fly ridden, sauna-like enclosures many public facilities resemble in South America), but one thing I didn't want to do is litter their fields with toilet paper, which got me thinking, how do the villagers dispose of their paper after a dump? After all, the crusty soil would not be an easy place to dig a hole every time you had to relieve yourself. It was only then that we learned something that at once horrified me and made me happy that I wasn´t a poor mountain peasant: the villagers use stones to clean themselves after defecating! I always thought folks without toilet paper would use leaves, but there are no trees here – only rocks.
During day two of our trip, we spent the entire day on the lawn of a tiny catholic church, where numerous groups came to have their crosses blessed and of course to drink and dance. Various groups of villagers, some dressed in traditional dress, did the same circle dance, played the same tune as the night before and drank. We spent the entire day sort of waiting for something to happen, but this day of the fiesta held little for the casual tourist. A few crosses were likely blessed inside the church and a few babies were baptized, but it was all in Quechua, the local language, so we didn't understand any of it, and by the looks of it, didn't look particularly interesting anyway.
In the evening, we left for Macha. A community of approximately 100 families, Macha has become a focal point for the festival as it offers the largest church in northern Potosi. It is here that the villagers come to engage in their tinkus, one on one bare fisted battles between men and women from different villages. Some competing theories seek to explain the origins for these encounters. First and foremost, bloodshed is eagerly anticipated and applauded. Like the slaughtered llamas, it is considered to be a sacrifice for Pachamama, or mother earth. The more blood spilled, the better the harvest the following year. And a death or two is supposed to bode especially well. But in real terms, I believe that these people simply like to fight, and that they often don't like the neighboring communities very much. So the yearly encounter is designed either to limit the beatings you might give to your neighbors to once a year, or to simply give you the opportunity to beat the crap out of someone you don't like.
The ritual aspects of the festival precede the actual fighting and really consist only of the communities' entrance into the town square, where they repeat their dance at each of the four corners. After that, they go off to eat and drink until they decide they're ready to have at it. In the morning, before many of the communities filed in, we saw some of the best action of the day. In one of the first battles in the day, one young mother calmly unstrapped the baby off her back before taking her spot in the circle and unloading a series of straight right hands into the nose of her larger opponent. Like most of the women fighting that day, she grabbed the hair of her counterpart for leverage, lining her up to deliver some punishing damage.
The Bolivian authorities take a dim view of the festival and while they allow it to occur, they make it safer by trying to referee the one on one encounters with policemen. On average, I'd say most fights lasted only about 2 minutes, or until someone had been knocked down or if the community of one of the fighters decided to stop it when one of their members had taken too much punishment. I'm not sure if the presence of the police influences the way in which the villagers fight, but one thing I can say is that no one backs down in the least. Very little circling and there's no time for the fighters to feel each other out. They simply try to inflict as much punishment as possible on each other within a short period of time and appear to think little of their own safety. And while a tinku is considered a ritual battle, there is nothing fancy about it, it's just about crushing the other guy (or gal).
While the authorities attempt to keep order, some of the craziest battles appear in the corners where the police are not. These go on longer and often result in greater injury. Some folks reported seeing fighters knocked unconscious, especially when falling on the ubiquitous cobblestone. Either way, there's no shortage of blood on the ground by sunset.
Not surprisingly, many one on one battles evolve into group battles, when folks whip each other with ropes and sticks. Rocks are sometimes also thrown in such altercations. Before getting out of hand, the police lob a few canisters of tear gas to disperse the crowd and calm settles. Some girls in our tour reported seeing an ear torn off (probably grabbed by an opponent for leverage), though the owner appears to have gotten it back.
One thing that surprised me somewhat is that there were no displays of sportsmanship after the fights. No hugging or handshakes. In fact, it seemed more likely that someone usually wanted to keep banging away even after it was over. While our guides told us that virtually all the villagers who showed up to the festival was prepared to fight, I'd say that only about 200 individual battles took place. The authorities appear to be trying to get rid of the festival since they consider it barbaric and few Bolivians appreciate the holiday enough to pay a visit. So a few years from now, I wouldn't be surprised to see the entire festival watered down and reduced to boring dances.
The next day, our tour made a stop home at another hot spring, our third in roughly three weeks. This particular spring is several hundred feet deep, making it sort of a difficult place to relax, as you heat up pretty quickly swimming around. Here, one of our guides related that he had gotten laid the previous evening with another (female) guide. What somehow makes it amusing is that they did it on the communal bathroom floor of our lodgings, perhaps one of the filthiest places on the planet to have sex. A group of toilets without running water employed by drunken backpackers finding there way around with flashlights. But I suppose when you grow up in a poor village without running water, boning in the slick mud of a restroom floor isn't so bad.
Since eating good foods can be a big part an adventure (although it has not been for most of our trip), I thought our new Bolivian food favorite was worth blogging about.
Just the other day, Wilson and I discovered a local (food) favorite in Bolivia – salteñas. We stumbled upon salteñas by accident. While in Potosi, we were looking for a nice joint to dine in for breakfast and stopped at a local shop that served fried chicken and fries. We arrived around 11 am and the waitress told us all they had at that time were salteñas. Not knowing what they were, we decided to dine next door at a local cafe (Cherry's) that, in retrospect, was not very good. Since Wilson was starving by that time, he walked next door to the chicken place to pick up a couple of salteñas before our order came. He shared one with me – and after finishing our salteñas, we both knew we had found our favorite local food in Bolivia.
Salteñas are dough wrapped, empanada-like pastries with a juicy filling of chicken or beef and other vegetables and sauce mixed in. The difference between salteñas and empanadas is salteñas are unique to Bolivia and have a distinct taste to empanadas, while empanadas, which originated in Argentina, is a general term used for anything that is breaded with a filling and sold throughout Latin American countries. Also, salteñas have a sweeter, corn-like dough covering with a very juicy filling consisting of sauce, meat and some vegetables. And to be honest, in my opinion, salteñas beat empanadas any day.
When we arrived in Sucre on Thursday, I insisted we'd have to have some fresh salteñas for breakfast the next day. After searching for a local “Salteñeria” (store that only made salteñas), we resorted to the expert advice of a local selling stationery. She recommended the salteñeria “El Patio.” We arrived at El Patio to find a line of about 10 people waiting to order. Not knowing how it worked, I went to the kitchen and asked if we can sit down and order. Come to find out, it was like a fast food joint where you had to order everything first and then sit down. We ordered 5 salteñas – 2 chicken and 3 meat. I immediately took note of how the locals ate their salteñas:
1) I noticed some locals held the salteña in their hands and stuffed it into their mouths like a taco, bite by bite. Wilson and I ate them like this, not knowing what the right etiquette was.
2) Upon walking into this shop, I also noticed many young students eating the salteñas by poking a hole in the middle. They would then scoop out the innards like a pot pie and eat the crust last. I tested this method but was quite disappointed since when you got to the end, you only had the crust with no filling left.
3) We also took note that one little Bolivian kid had a salteña broken up into little pieces and ate them like little morsels. Neither of us tried this since his mother might have broken them up for him just to make it easier to put in this mouth.
No matter how you eat them, I must say, they are absolutely delicious. They are an easy, to-go pot pie that can be eaten by hand and by the dozen (only if you are really hungry). Wilson also suggested taking a class on making salteñas but if I do, I just might food poison Wilson once again – so I think I'll leave it to the Bolivian cooking experts to make them.
Last week, we went on another 3 day/2 night tour to see the salt flats and lagoons in Bolivia. Much of the tour was spent sitting in a 4x4 car driving from one location to another. I think we spent over 20 hours sitting in the car in the three days but all-in-all, it was a great trip.
Below is a quick summary of our three days.
Day 1 We spent the first day visiting several locations including the Train Cemetery, salt flats, Isla de Pez and spending the night at a Salt Hotel. The Train Cemetery was interesting – just some railroad tracks and a 'dead' train that's (obviously) no longer functioning.
Our next stop was at the salt flats. These flats were pretty neat – hundreds of kilometers of pure salt. It definitely reminded me of snow but after a quick taste of the white stuff, there was no doubt it was salt. Apparently the salt flats use to be a lake surrounded with volcanoes over 25,000 years ago. All the volcanoes are now inactive, except for one that spits out mud and another that spits out oxygen.
We also stopped by an island that is shaped like a fish (Isla de Pez), supposedly. The weird thing was when we looked out of the island, we expected to see water but only saw miles of salt. Our 4x4 broke down on the way to the hotel. Luckily, our guide, Walter (who reminded me of Porky Pig) was a mechanic so he was able to fix the car in no time. (see photo - note: his feet don´t touch the ground when he works on he car - too cute)
That evening, Wilson and I stayed at a hotel made of all salt. It was a lot nicer than we had both expected. I thought there were no showers but apparently there were. Unfortunately, we had to pay since our tour didn't include one but we opted to be dirty for a couple days just for the adventure (actually it was too cold to take off our clothes to shower).
Day 2 Today we spent the first couple hours in the car heading to see a series of lagoons. On the way, without fail, our car broke down. Apparently the gas line wasn´t working. This time Walter connected a plastic tube from a container of petroleum on the roof of the car to the carborator fuel line. Not something they would do in the States but it worked out fine. We continued on our journey for hours and finally arrived at our first lagoon. It was amazing to see a lagoon in the middle of the desert. After, we saw about three of four another lagoons which all looked the same after the first one. There were lots of flamingos in the first lagoon which was also pretty interesting since it was in the middle of the desert.
That evening we stayed at a 'refugio' (mountain hut), which if I didn't know Spanish would have thought it was a house for refugees. Quite honestly, the place was like a refugee house with just bare-bone basics. The five UK medical students in our tour, Wilson and I had to share a room. We slept in damp sheets, smelly sleeping bags and had to get up at 4 am the next morning to start our day.
Day 3 I was the first to wake up around 4:15 am and woke the rest of the folks up. We all tumbled into the 4x4 to our first destination, the thermal baths. We arrived at the thermal baths around 7:00 am, before sunrise. Wilson and Dav, one of the guys on our tour, quickly jumped into the thermal baths. I, on the other hand, tried several times to undress and jump in but while undressing midway, would put all my clothes back on. The temperature outside was about 20 degrees F, which to me is quite cold. I finally got in before sunrise.
It was an absolute treat to go into the thermal baths when it was so cold outside. After, we all ate breakfast and then were on our way back to Uyuni. Before getting back, we stopped at Lake Colorado, which also had many flamingos hanging out in the lake. We've come across many posters asking visitors to vote Lake Colorado as a “7 Wonders of the World”. Although it was beautiful, it definitely does not quality as a “7 Wonders of the World”.
We also stopped by some geysers that smelled of sulfur. Inside the geysers, the temperature is approximately 100 degrees F so while we were taking photos, I took extreme care not to fall in (not to mention, I would also smell for ages).
We got back to Uyuni around 5:00 pm or so. Our guide told us the complete trip was nearly 900 km round-trip. It was definitely a fun, worthwhile trip. Bolivia is definitely a beautiful country with lots of natural wonders, and I´ve come to realize you don´t have to take a shower every day to enjoy them!
Last week, we were on a 4 day/3 night Inca Jungle Tour. Machu Picchu was not on our original agenda (not that we actually have an agenda) so we we didn't book in advance the official Inca Trail – the 23,000 kilometers (approximately 14,000 miles) of roads built by the Incas in South America. As I explained in the last blog entry, this tour includes a day of bike riding and two days of hiking and is one of the alternative hikes we can take around Machu Picchu. .
Below is a quick summary of our days leading up to Machu Picchu and my thoughts on the site. Day 1 – Downhill Bike Ride The first day, we did a 2-2.5-hour downhill bike ride. All the folks were going pretty fast, drifting downhill, making a nice turns along the road, while I trailed behind. I had a couple problems: I braked much of the way down, braked even more going into a turn and I was in the wrong gear. Wilson kept telling me to change gears on my bike, but I've never mastered changing gears on a bike. As a kid (and even now) I always rode on the same gear whether it was up or down hill. In fact, since I grew up in Salinas – a town of agricultural - everything was so flat there was no need to use the gears. Anyway, after attempting to change gears the first time, my chain fell off. I was already trailing behind the group but after the chain came off, I was really behind. It's funny because as we were going downhill, we had a van that followed us the whole way. The driver of the van stopped when he noticed I was having problems with my bike. But the driver never stepped out of his car to help me. Instead, Wilson and this other guy helped me put my chain back on.
We were back on the road in no time, and the rest of the group was waiting for us further down the road. When we arrived, we all started up again. This time, I was smart enough to get behind the guide, not brake but drift down the hill, and only brake slightly before the turns, while pedaling into the turns. I was really scared because our guide told us one lady died from this downhill bike ride just 3 weeks back. Apparently she was going too fast downhill and as she was making a blinded turn, she went head-on with a car. The car obviously won.
After another 1.5 hours, we were done. We headed to a small town one hour from where we ended. The place where we stayed was a “hospedaje” for just our group of 10. Not the best smelling, nor looking, hotel but it was pretty neat to get the whole place to ourselves. Kind of like those deserted hotels in the middle of nowhere. This town only had about 1,000 people or less – no Internet, animals and kids running around the streets and dirt roads.
Day 2 – Trekking
On the second day, we did a 8-hour hike up and down a mountain into the town of Santa Maria. We started the trek around 7:15 am and ended around 4 or 5 pm. The trek was beautiful along the mountain but there were points during the hike when I was scared out of my wits. Near the top of one of the mountains, we had to walk down these stairs on a narrow path where you can see the bottom of the mountain where the river ran. I knew if I slipped and fell, I would not be happy. I also noticed at this point that I was scared of heights (at least when it was this high) so as I was walking down the stairs, I was hugging the side of the mountain, while the rest of the group walked quickly down.
After we were done with the hike, we arrived in a little town where there were natural hot baths. The water apparently comes from the mountains and the ground. This was a great way to end a near-8-hour hike. There were a number of pools including one that was super hot (like a hot tub), a luke warm bath (like your tub) and a really cold one where cold water came down from the mountain.
When we were done with the baths, a bus took us to a little town about 20-minutes from the thermal baths, Santa Maria. This town had about 2,000 or more folks, they had Internet and a couple more main streets than the previous place. Again, we got our own rooms and this time it didn't smell musky. We even hit a couple of discotecas (clubs) that our guide brought us to. I think the first club she brought us to was owned by her friend. The place smelled like an aquarium, and just as Wilson was saying this to the other folks in our group, our guide started spraying a disinfectant in all the rooms. Yum. The club reminded me of the clubs in Wuhan, China – garage-looking rooms with bad speakers, no people except the folks that worked there and an ugly ambiance. There was no one in this club except for our tour group. Day 3 – Railroad Tracks
Today was the worse of the three days. We hiked for approximately 3.5 hours along the railroad tracks to Aguas Calientes, the nearest town to Machu Picchu. The whole time, all of us had to look down to keep ourselves from tripping over the tracks and the rocks around it. Although the scenery was beautiful around us, we had to continue looking down the whole 3.5 hours, missing the beautiful sites around us. Even more, our guide walked about 30 meters in front of us, not making stops to explain the scenery around us or keeping us entertained, so many of us in the group thought this was one of the worse days of the hike. A couple of us even wondered why we didn't just take the actual train that led us to the town...I guess it's all for the experience.
The highlight of the day was when one of our group members, Grant from Canada, put a coin under the train as it was crossing. He got a nicely, flattened Peruvian sol. After, we all started putting coins on the tracks as the trains crossed over them. I think the best coin to put under the track is an American quarter. The coin was flattened so much that we could no longer read what was on the coin. (As you can see, the hike must have been really boring for us to be so entertained by this.)
We finally arrived in the town of Aguas Calientes, the nearest town to Machu Picchu. Wilson and some other folks climbed up a mountain overlooking Machu Picchu while the rest of the group relaxed in town. According to Wilson, the guide took this group to the foot of the mountain and then left the group to go up by themselves with no further advice. This mountain was quite dangerous because the group was going up pretty late (the sun was about to set) and it was pretty steep. I understand all the other groups at the top of this mountain went up with their guides. Wilson said he had to come down this steep mountain in the dark, all while he had a rumbling stomach (he knew he had food poisoning yet again). Day 4 – Machu Picchu After three days of hiking and biking, we knew the big day has come – the day to see Machu Picchu. Wilson, (a veteran of food poisoning) got over a quick evening of food poisoning and felt much better this morning. We got up bright and early around 4:15 am to catch a 5:35 am bus to Machu Picchu. The bus line was about 80+ people early in the morning. I felt like it was Disneyland, where you had to wait in a long line for one ride. Surprisingly, the buses were very efficient and the line went down in 10 minutes.
We arrived in Machu Picchu around 6:00 am with the rest of the tourists. Unfortunately, we weren't able to see the sunrise because the morning clouds had not burned off yet. But at approximately 8:00 am or so, the clouds went away and we saw a spectacular view of Machu Picchu and the mountains surrounding it.
Random Thoughts of the Site
Machu Picchu is definitely a spectacular site – being set on a mountainside with beautiful mountains surrounding it and being built hundreds of years ago of rock and clay. One question I have around the site is why does everyone feel like they have to hike 4-5 days prior to visiting the site when there are buses that lead directly to Machu Picchu. Even we did a hike for a couple days before seeing Machu Picchu (just because we felt we had to) but of course had a great time. This hike and all the other alternative trails don't even lead the hikers directly into Machu Picchu. Instead, hikers walk on the outskirts of where the site is and never into Machu Picchu. I guess it's all for the experience. It's also hard for me to compare Machu Picchu to other sites in the world (as I probably shouldn't) like The Great Wall, Ankor Wot, The Forbidden City, etc. It's definitely something worth seeing but I didn't get a 'wowing' experience from the actual ruins. Instead, I was more impressed by the setting of the ruins, hidden among the other mountains and the fact that it was built on a mountainside in the 1400-1500s. The guide told us that Cusco was once the Capital of the Inca empire, and was built in a similar fashion as Machu Picchu until the Spanish conquered the Incas and destroyed the city of Cusco. I think it would have been more interesting to see Cusco then (it would have been like Machu Picchu but at a much larger scale). But even today, Cusco is a beautiful colonial town with cobblestone roads, big churches and great buildings.
On a different note, we are currently reading the book “Lost City of the Incas” by Hiram Bingham, who claimed he found Machu Picchu, although according to Wikipedia others have found the site before him but did not do further research nor document like Bingham. Perhaps this is a book worth picking up before visiting Machu Picchu.
After three days in La Paz, we thought we had adjusted to the altitude of nearly 3,640 M pretty well. During one of our dinners, we had a couple of local Pilsner beers with our Peruvian food (we ordered a pile of rice with fried fish and pig fat-chicharon). After dinner, we had to hike up a flight of stairs and walk about half a block to our hostel As we began walking up the flight of stairs, we noticed immediately that our hearts started pounding, as if we had just run a mile in 6 minutes (or less). I was starting to think we were an old-out-of-shape couple (though we kind of are) until asking a couple other folks if the same thing happened to them. We found out that alcohol really worsens the affects of altitude sickness. Our nice Canadian couple friends also mentioned it got worse for them after half a bottle of beer - and they took altitude pills.
Other symptoms include our throbbing headaches, a bloody nose, tight chest and shortness of breath.
Copacabana, Bolivia We also took a two-day trip outside to Copacabana, Bolivia (right outside of La Paz). Copacabana is a developed city bordering the never-ending Lake Titicaca. The lake has a surface area of 8,300 km square, with a length of 195 km and an average width of 50 km, and borders both Bolivia and Peru. It's much bigger than our Lake Tahoe at home. In Copacabana, there really was not much to do other than explore the small town and take a day-trip to the Isla de Sol (Sun Island). So the first day we took a little hike up to the Stations of the Cross in Copacabana, where we got a nice view of the city and watched the sunset. Immediately, as we were hiking up this small hill, we noticed once again how the altitude really affected us. We were huffing and puffing after only 30 meters or less but managed to make it to the top.
The following day, we took a boat to Isla de Sol. This little island is divided into three communities – the north, south and middle. The guide told us that the north and south communities were richer than the middle community because they got much of their money from tourism, as many of the boats embark at either side of the island. The middle portion is the poorest since they do not get any of the tourist funds. We were also told that we were only supposed to pay at the North and South ends of the islands and not to pay anyone in between that would be asking us for money.
During our hike, we were approached about four times to pay. It's a bit strange to be hiking down the same stretch for about 3 hours and out of the blue, be asked to pay a fee. I think the funniest incident was when we were approached the second time to pay, an indigenous man asked us to pay and we all refused (since we were specifically told by the guide to avoid anyone asking for payment in the middle of the hike). After we refused, two indigenous women tried to block Wilson and another guy (who was not small) trying to walk by screaming we were to pay and if we refused would be charged more at the end. I wanted to take a picture but thought it would be rude during a time of conflict.
Overall, the hike was beautiful along the Titicaca Lake although there was not a lot of changing scenery.
Machu Picchu Since we've somewhat adjusted to the altitude, and because we are so close to the Peruvian border, we've decided to see Machu Picchu. The official trail on Machu Picch is the Inca Trail but you have to book up to four months in advance since there are only a limited number of people allowed on the trail daily. Unfortunately, we didn't plan on coming here so we've opted for an Inca Jungle Tour which includes some trail bike riding (all down hill) and two days of hiking, none of which lead us to Machu Picchu. We actually have to take a train to Machu Picchu from a nearby town, Aguas Calientes, on our fourth day. We were supposed to leave today for this hike but there was some misunderstanding with the agency so we leave tomorrow instead. We will have to provide a short update when we get back.
We just arrived in La Paz, Bolivia. We'll try to take it easy for a couple days since the altitude is 11942 feet above sea level (great excuse to not exercise for a couple days!). But honestly, Wilson and I have been having headaches these last two days.
Before leaving Argentina, we visited Patagonia: Perito Moreno Glacier in El Calafate and Fitzroy in El Chaten - and had to say good bye to some folks we really liked (but happy -or sad- to report there were no tears during the good bye). Patagonia was absolutely one of the highlights to our trip.
The Perito Moreno Glacier, in the Perito Moreno National Park, looked like a perfect square chunk of ice (well, it is) on a lake. It reminded me of the perfect white-frosted cakes at the gourmet bakery shops--until the end of the glacier caves in. Perito Moreno Glacier is one of the famous glaciers known for its frequent 'cave-ins'.
We also hiked on the glaciers with camprons (spikes worn on the bottom of your shoes). I was a bit nervous before the trek on the Glacier, but once Wilson told me that the trek was for folks between the ages of 10-60, I "knew I can do it." The photos in the following link really show-off the beauty of the glaciers:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=73240&id=545832350&l=cd5d333b53.
For our hike up (and this was really a hike) to Fitzroy in El Chaten, it took us nearly 4 hours to get near the top. The hike was absolutely beautiful with changing scenery throughout the trek. We highly recommend Patagonia as a must-visit before you die. (More photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=73238&id=545832350&l=25baed95f9)
On the Bolivian front, we arrived the day before Easter around 1 am and settled nicely into our hostal - Posada del Abuela. The first day in La Paz, we ate at a great restaurant (well, great for the price): Angelo Colonial on Avenida Santa Cruz. For less than $3, we got salad, soup, pork with veggies and fries and a coffee. We immediately noticed the service was more attentive and friendly compared to Argentina. After lunch, we strolled around town with a slight headache due to the altitude.
Later, Wilson got a massage (which he later told me was in a bathroom), while I went to buy him a birthday present (don't tell him) and had my first beer in Bolivia. I immediately noticed that the 'head' (for non drinkers: that's the bubbles) of the beer was much taller than normal. I understand this is also due to the altitude.
That's it for now. We'll update again once we decide where we'd like to go.
There was not much to do in Santa Cruz other than visit a small, local zoo, a Dinosaur Park (with footprints of dinosaurs) and Biocentro Guembe – a park and resort with exotic plants, butterflies and animals. Our last days were spent in Samaipata – about 3 hours outside of Santa Cruz. 
We had walked about 2.5 km to the zoo so we were pretty salty by then. We even toured the zoo with her wrapped around our neck, licking us. She didn't get along with the other caged monkeys because she would appear stressed and make these squeaking noises when we'd walk near the cage. Our guide told us she just didn't get along with the other monkeys. We also spent a fair amount of time looking at the caged monkeys playing and having sex with one another. We witnessed two male monkeys taking turns copulating. One of my favorite monkeys was one that would rub his stomach to show he was hungry, all while munching on tomatoes and carrots. 
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