We arrived in Cusco, Peru last night and haven´t explored much yet, but here are a couple of shots from the Inca wall, a testament to the civilization’s stoneworking and engineering abilities- no mortar holds these stones together.
Tomorrow we´ll be visiting the Inca ruins nearest to Cusco, and the day after that we’ll be in Machu Picchu. We can’t wait.
“The 12 sided stone”
By far the most popular day trip from Copacabana is the hour+ boat ride to the Isla del Sol, or Island of the Sun. The original Aymara name for the island was Titikaka, which eventually became the name of the whole lake.
According to Inca legend, this island is the place where the creator of the universe called forth the sun, and there are still ruins of Inca temples in the north and south of the island.
There are no vehicles on the island and the terrain is extremely steep, so donkeys and llamas are used to porter everything from groceries to drinking water to hostels and residences.
Our visit to the Pilcocaina ruins in the south of the island was just a tiny preview of what we expect to find throughout Peru- remains of the Inca empire, proud but gone.
Inca Steps
There once was a lame Barry Manilow song named after a New York City nightclub,
Which was named after a beach in Rio de Janerio, Brazil,
Which was named after a town in Bolivia on the eastern shore of Lake Titicaca,
Which is where we´ve spent the last couple of days.
Here are some pics.
View from the lake.
View from the shore.
For its status as a major area tourist destination, Copacabana remains a sweet little town that feels less touristy than one might expect. Usually there isn´t a lot to do in the town except walk around, hang around the beach or in a hammock at your hostel, but our timing was such that we were afforded a better glimpse of local culture than most get- shortly after we arrived, we went to a Bolivian bullfight.
We didn´t know what to expect, but it sounded a bit milder than the Spanish version since were told by our hostel host that the they didn´t kill the bulls, so we went.
The event turned out to be more of a Bull Tease or Bull Annoy than a Bull Fight, with young, small bulls engaged in the brick ring by young, small men in their teens and early twenties. There were three seating options: rickety scaffolding, tops of minibuses, and sitting on the ring itself. We chose the first one.
We didn’t see any other tourists at the event, which was suprising since it is a once-every-three-month event. In any case, it seemed like most of the town turned out for it, which made spectating the crowd that surrounded us just as interesting as what was going on in the ring.
The event began with a parade through town by the local soccer team
Entering La Paz, we really didn’t know what to expect. We knew it was a big city, but so are Buenos Aires and Santiago, so that didn’t mean anything. Other travelers we’d met down here didn’t speak highly of La Paz, which is part of the reason we were happily suprised to find it to be one of the most interesting and exciting cities we’ve ever visited.
Strangely, place that felt most similar to it was Saigon, Vietnam, but only because of how frenetic, culturally exotic, and extremely impovershed both cities are.
We stayed at the Adventure Brew Hostel while in La Paz for three important reasons: it was close to the bus station, relatively new, and offers daily free beer from their onsite microbrewery to people staying there. We didn’t even know about that third reason before going there, despite the fact that both Brianne and I were wearing brewery-related clothing (Wolaver’s and Rogue, respectively) when we checked in.
On our first night there we plunged ourselves into a world of pedestrian packed, poorly maintained sidewalks, playing human Frogger with endless microbuses, and street vendors selling everything from pirated dvds to fruit juice and underwear. It was the most fun walking around a city we’ve had since Thailand, and if our clothes and Brianne’s hair color didn’t give us away as tourists, the goofy grins we were both wearing probably did.
The bus ride from Putre, Chile to La Paz, Bolivia was one of our most memorable in all of South America. Much of the route winds through the Lauca Nacional Park, which contains two volcanoes over 6400 meters, countless llama and alpaca, and many ducks and flamingos.
The border crossing into Bolivia was uneventful, and after we crossed a young woman got on the bus carrying a brightly colored blanket wrapped around two tiny, mewling lambs. Also, they played Fists of Legend (dubbed in Spanish) during the ride, so that was a treat.
Although La Paz is one of the highest cities in the world, it is built into a narrow valley, and our first glimpse of it was literally mindblowing. It’s one of those places you’ve never imagined existing, but then there it is, thousand and thousands of structures, covering the valley like lichen. Besides La Paz’s and Bolivia’s cultural uniqueness (which I’ll get to in another post), the city itself is a wonder.
Traveling north through Chile faced us with a bit of a problem. On one hand, we were sick of overnight bus rides and going through the whole Arrive in Bus Station->Hotel->Check In->Restaurant->Sleep->Check Out->Bus Station nonsense, and on the otherhand, we need to get places. Essentially what we ended up doing was traveling about 1,100 miles in three days and stopping ever so briefly along the way.
Our first stop was Caldera, a nice enough beach town 14 hours from Santiago with very little to do except walk around and eat ice cream. Lest we forget, there are worse things we could be doing, and worse places we could be doing them. We stayed in Caldera for one night, but the bus the following day didn´t leave until 8:40 P.M., so we spent a lot of time watching videos on CollegeHumor.com and reading The Onion. Total cost? About $3. Hey, it´s cheaper than a movie.
After Pucon we headed for Santiago, the nation´s capital. For once, our arrival corresponded with what we thought would be a major local holiday- September 18th, Chile´s independence day from Spain. Since we arrived on the 16th, we spent the first couple days walking around and visiting art galleries and museums, such as the wonderful Bellas Artes museum and the fine, extensive Pre-Columbian museum. Santiago wasn´t that interesting architecturally, but it was very pedestrian friendly, and relatively inexpensive for a large city.
On the 17th we made our way down to O´Higgins park, where tons of families were gathered to watch musicians and dancers, eat tasty carnival food, and fly many, many kites. It was extremely charming and wholesome.
When the big day arrived, we left our hotel expecting the streets to be crowded, but this is what we found:
