Getting to Sucre and Sucre

As it turns out, the first challenge in going to see the town of Sucre is, in fact, just getting to Sucre. The bus was scheduled as a 12 hour overnight ride. At around 3am or so, we pulled over to the side of the road. Being half asleep, I was bit confused, but didn't really care enough to wake up. At about 6am, when I woke up, I was a bit unhappy to see that we were still in the same spot. Megan deftly put her spanish skills to work and found that we had encountered our first Bolivian blockade. The picture below shows the line of cars backed up behind us (a bit hard to see when it's this small, but trust me, there were a lot of cars):

We spent the next few hours alternating between trying to sleep more and trying to figure out what was going on. Basically the summary was something like the farmers wanted better roads, a policeman had been killed and that it might be a little dangerous. Over the next few hours, all of our reports came from people who got on and off the bus. Eventually, all the men got off the bus, started drinking, and then they all rushed the blockade and somehow cleared the road off. As we drove through the blockade, we were warned to stay away from the windows because there might be rocks coming through them, but I risked a couple of pictures anyway:

No rocks ended up coming through the window, although there were some angry looking people outside. A nice 12 hour trip ended up taking closer to 21 in the end (and apparently that was lucky because these can go on for days sometimes).

Anyway, Sucre is famous for it's whitewashed colonial buildings on the town square. After reading this about 15 times on the bus, I got a bit overexcited when I shouted and scared a poor guy who was actually in the process of whitewashing of a building.

Aside from whitewashed buildings, Sucre is also famous for is Cretaceous Park. A concrete company excavating for raw materials found thousands of dinosaur tracks on a vertical rock face. Bolivia turned it into a theme park/archeological site. We took the DinoBus out the park. The rock face doesn't look all that spectacular:

Until you use the zoom lense:

There are about 4500 tracks in total on the wall. They include some of the longest continuous sets of dino tracks in the world. The tour we had was one of the best I've had in South America. The guide explained how the tracks were pushed vertically by the plate movement that formed the Andes, how the different types of tracks were identified to various families of dinosaurs and how the sizes of those dinosaurs were estimated. Some of the most interesting tracks were lost when the v-shaped patch (with the rubble at the bottom) collapsed a couple of months ago, but more tracks were found on the rock that was exposed.

Of course, after the real tracks, there was also the theme park, complete with life-size models of dinosaurs and dinosaur sounds:

La Paz

After our tour of Lake Titicaca, we crossed the border to Bolivia through Copacabana. I learned a couple of interesting things in the crossing. First of all, it is a pain to be an American crossing into Bolivia. I had to wait in 4 lines, get 8 photocopies of my passport and vaccine card (apparently other nationalities are immune to yellow fever. Only Americans needed to show the card), and pay $135US for a visa. Second, Bolivians still harbor some lingering resentment against Chile for taking their last access to the ocean. The text on the mural reads "that which was ours will be ours once again." Apparently, Bolivia plans on taking back the shoreline from Chile by stabbing them in throats with bayonetts.

Megan, Christie and I expanded the group for a couple of days with our new American friends from the bus: Chris and Ravi. Chris and Ravi were doing a (relatively) quick tour of Peru and Bolivia.

The word on La Paz is that there are some very pretty parts of the city and interesting things to see, but there are also some parts that are very unsafe for foreigners. Our bus decided to forgo a trip to the bus terminal and left us in the middle of town. We were immediately approached by a helpful "policeman" who wanted to direct us to a hostel and spoke privately to every cab driver who approached us. We did not accept his help. We ended up staying in a hostel close to the main plaza. Where we got the chance to watch the changing of the guard:

One of La Paz's best features are its extensive outdoor markets. We spent several hours wandering through the black market (shoes, electronics, kitchen supplies, etc...) and a nearby food market:

But the most interesting market was far and away the Witch's Market. Here we found a lot of touristy clothing (Che t-shirts, alpaca hats and gloves...), but we also saw the makings of Aymara ritual sacrifices to Pachamama (Mother Earth). Apparently, if you burn an offering to Pachamama, she will respond by granting you what you wish (up to twice the value you burned). The centerpiece of any respectable offering is, of course, a desiccated llama fetus, which were plentifully available in the market:

The hostel we stayed at (Wild Rover) was huge, and organized trips to bars every night. Chris, Megan, myself, Ravi, Christie and a mystery girl out on the town:

Lago Titicaca

After Cusco, Christie, Megan and I headed to Puno, Peru to tour Lake Titicaca. It was a short overnight bus ride, so we arrived at about 4:30am. We found a hostel, got a room, grabbed a couple of hours of sleep, then headed out to a full day tour of Lake Titicaca.

The most famous attraction on the lake near Puno are the floating islands. Our boat took us out the islands where we received a demonstration of how the islands are constructed:

Got a chance to taste the edible part of the reeds that make up the islands:

Megan took the opportunity to pick up a native child:

And we were give a musical send off in Spanish, English and Aymara:

We road what the tour guide repeatedly and jokingly referred to as "the mercedes benz" reed boat on a short trip to another of the floating islands:

Then we hopped back on the motorboat for the 2.5 hour trip out into the main body of the lake to Taquile island. Safety first:

Taquile island was pretty small. We ate lunch, listened to a sales pitch about the importance of buying local crafts from the Aymara on the island, walked back down to the port and headed home.

The lake was very pretty, but the tour was a bit disappointing. The people on both the floating islands and Taquile obviously live completely off of revenue from tourists now. The crafts they sold appeared very similar to items that were available on land in Puno and in many of the other towns I have visited, but cost about three times as much. It's an incredibly unique place, but it felt as though it has been taken over completely by the tourism industry.

We returned to the hostel, figured out that electric water heater was shorted to the hot water knob (not fun), stayed the night, then headed off to Bolivia!

Cusco and the Salkantay Trail

After leaving Ayacucho, A.J. and I headed out to Cusco to see the Fiesta de Sol and hike the Salkantay Trail. At our hostel, we met up with the redheaded Canadian wonder twins -Christie and Megan- (they're not actually related), who we had met in Lima. The Fiesta de Sol is an Incan festival honoring the sun. The festival took place both in Cusco itself and on Saqsaywaman mountain. The festival was huge. The town square was completely packed at night, with a parade of musicians and people dressed in typical indigenous clothing. The festival continued on Saqsaywaman the next afternoon by a set of Incan ruins. Families spent the day cooking in the field and relaxing, and there was a dancing display.

A.J.'s friend was delayed in getting to Peru from the states, so Megan, Christie and I ended up leaving on the trek while A.J. waited in Cusco. We joined up with a friend of Megan and Christie's who they knew from Brazil. Our group of four (myself, Christie, Megan and Yoav), left bright and early in the morning to start on the trek. The Salkantay Trail is a 5 day/4 night hiking trip from Mollepata (a couple hour drive from Cusco) to Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu. Our guide, Edgar, quickly christened us "Puma's Team." After breakfast in Mollepata, we began hiking through the Andes near Salkantay Mountain. We stopped for lunch (grilled fish) and posed for our first team picture.

We hiked the rest of the day to Soraypampa pass at the foot of the mountain. Soraypampa is at about 3800m above sea level, so there's no oxygen and it's freezing. Fortunately, our tour guides (Edgar, "the cooker" and "horse guy"), had all of our belongings, tents and sleeping bags waiting for us in the pass. Before dinner we got a chance to warm up a bit in our pavilion at tea time (which turned out to be a daily pre-dinner tradition involving tea, popcorn, crackers and a lot of margarine).

We spent the night doing our best to avoid losing fingers or toes to frostbite, and woke early the next morning to climb through the pass next to Salkantay mountain. We were served hot coca tea to help thaw us out and compensate for the lack of air. While I'm sure that the tea helped, climbing the side of a mountain at that altitude is one of the harder physical activities I have ever done. Basically we had to walk one switchback, stop to catch our breath, walk another, stop... But I got pictures like this one of Salkantay Mountain:

We spent the rest of the day and the next couple of days descending through valleys in the Andes, through the jungle and along railroad tracks heading towards Aguas Calientes. It was all very pretty, but aside from one head over heels fall off the side of the trail because I was looking at a sheep, there weren't too many great stories (in all fairness, I was not the only one to fall because I was watching animals). You'll just have to wait for the photo album.

Aguas Calientes has a special place in my heart as one of the least interesting, most touristy cities I have ever been to. Not much to say about it except that it's really close to Machu Picchu. Admission to Machu Picchu actually includes an option to climb a second nearby mountain, Wayna Picchu. However, only 400 people are admitted to Wayna Picchu each day, so we woke up at 3:30am to ensure that we'd get an early enough bus to make it up to the entrance in the first 400. The trail between Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu can be walked, but it was pouring rain and there are over 1000 stairs up the side of the mountain, so we took the bus. The downside of getting up there so early is that the ruins look like this:

Fortunately, a few hours later, they looked more like this:

We had a tour of the ruins from Juan Carlos (not the king of spain), who gave us many interesting "facts" about the ruins, such as the 7 hour civil war of the Incans before the arrival of the Spanish. We wandered around the ruins on our own for a bit, then climbed Wayna Picchu. It took about an hour and the entire path was a staircase up the side of the mountain. I took a rest on a wall (you can see the ruins of Machu Picchu on the mountain behind me).

We took a train back to Cusco from Aguas Calientes, rested and did some much need laundry before heading off to Lago Titicaca and Bolivia.

Peru First Stops: Lima and Ayacucho

As part of my summer vacation before law school, I'm spending about 2 months wandering through South America. On June 18th, I kicked off my trip in Lima, Peru. I spent the next couple of days getting acclimated to Peru by remembering how to speak spanish, heading to museums, cathedrals, catacombs, eating ceviche and watching world cup soccer in the Plaza de Armas.

I met a group of people in my hostel in Lima who were interested in a wilderness trek near Machu Picchu. We decided on the Solkantay trek (coming soon to a blog post near you) in Cusco. My new friend A.J. and I decided to make a stop in Ayacucho on the way. Ayacucho is a town of about 150,000 people about halfway between Lima and Cusco. Ayacucho's claim to fame is its multitude of cathedrals, semana santa (holy week) celebration and history as a hotbed of the Shining Path terrorist movement in the 1980's and 1990's. These days, the town is quiet and relatively untouched by tourism.

A.J. and I were the subject of many interested looks from the local population. It turns out that our obvious outsider look would pay off in an unexpected fashion. On the morning of our first day in town, we were stopped on the street by a school teacher from an all girls elementary school near our hotel. We had a semi-confused conversation in Spanish in which we were invited to a concert the girls would be putting on the next afternoon of all English music. As it turns out, we were actually being invited to be judges in an English singing and dancing contest amongst nearly 300 students.

After awarding first prize to a group of 1st grade students who put on a thrilling rendition of Justin Beiber's "Baby" (complete with dance routine), A.J. and I hopped on a bus to Cusco to begin our Andean adventures.