La Paz, Bolivia

La Paz is nestled in a bowl surrounded by mountains. A very nice setting. Elevation at about 3600m.

 Busy street life in the big city.

 

A movable Pizza stand. Bolivians love their fast food. The most popular snack is a burger with a fried egg. These stands have huge stacks of burger paddies, fried eggs and onion ready for people to grab a snack on the street.

 Cool reflection opposite our hostel bar on the the top floor.

 Loving the colorful necklaces.

 Fun finger puppets.

Sunday night is Cholitas wresting night. Very entertaining!

Escping Peru...

While in Peru, miners and locals were striking against a proposed mine near the boarder of Bolivia and Lake Titicaca.  This was a problem because the road they were blocking was the closest and main crossing point between the two countries.  We heard that it was still possible to cross by boat, so we left Cusco for the Peruvian lakeside town of Puno.

When we got there, sure enough, we heard the road was still blocked and it was only possible to get to Bolivia by crossing the lake in a boat.  We thought that we might as well see the famous floating islands nearby and go to one of the nearby islands and stay the night with a local family.  We hoped that the strike might possibly be over when we got back.  That way we could take the much quicker and cheaper bus option.  We had a great time on our little overnight tour as you can see in the other post.

However, when we pulled up to the dock the next morning, we realized the strike problem wasn't getting better, but worse.  Much worse.  There were police officers with machine guns waiting for us and warning us to be very careful.  It turns out the thousands of strikers moved into town and took over.  It didn't look good.  No cars were on the roads and broken glass, bricks and stones were scattered around in the middle of the streets. 

As we made our way carefully back to our hotel, we saw a large group of protesters within two blocks of our place.  All of a sudden a man ran out of the crowd.  A few others chased after him throwing rocks.  We guessed it'd be a good idea to walk quickly away and make a large loop to approach the hotel from the opposite side.  We made it.

It was really time to leave.  So we decided to buy our boat ticket as soon as things mellowed out some outside.  Little did we know, we had to get our passports stamped to buy the ticket and to do this we had to pass through the parading strikers.  But there was no choice.

To make a long story a little shorter, we got our ticket and were on the boat first thing in the morning.  It was an extremely slow boat that took about nine hours.  The bus ride would have been maybe an hour.  The port on the Bolivian side was also closed, so we were met by a fleet of local rowboats that took us and our luggage to shore.  Then everybody walked about a mile across farms to get to an immigration office.  And finally we took a local taxi-bus to our destination of Copacabana.

I have to add that our bus crashed into a car when we left Copacabana.  AND we ran into another strike just outside of the next town where we were supposed to catch the train.  Luckily we were early enough that we still caught our train after walking a mile and talking the driver of a six-person van taxi into taking twelve of us to the train station.

Bolivia....adventure land.

 Stopped for another strike.

 The road was blocked by public employee vans.

Lago Titicaca

Lake Titicaca is the highest lake in the world. It's altitude is about 3800 meters above sea level and it's part of Peru as well as Bolivia. "Titi" means "puma"  and "caca" means "rock" in the Quechua language. We learned that on a trip to the the Isla Amantani where we spent the night with a native host family. It was a very fun experience. Especially playing with paper airplanes with the 10 year old boy "Jimmy" who speaks Spanish really well. At home the family speaks Quechua together, but kids learn Spanish in school from an early age.

 Jimmy and us in the host family's small kitchen.

Our hosts Gustina and Nicolas made us feel very welcome in their adobe home. Gustina is a certified cook and made delicious meals. Lots of carbs and all local ingredients like quinoa, fresh cow cheese patties and Oca (little sweet patatoes that we nicknamed Poopatatoes). I really liked the Muna tea, similar to a mint tea and it's supposed to help with high altitude.

 Sunset from the top of the hill behind the village. 

 Young girls trying to sell their hand made bracelets to Semu.

 Dressed up for the fiesta with the locals of the Occopampa community. It is one of 10 communities on Amantani Island. The integrating tourism project we were part of chooses host families by rotation, so all the different families and communities get the same opportunity of hosting international guests.

We also got to visit Isla Taquile, another island inhabited by Quechuan people. The natives still wear their traditional clothing every day which is very colorful.

Taquile Island

Celebration for 80 years of education. Those kids were super cute.

FLOATING ISLANDS

 There are floating islands on the Titicaca Lake made out of reeds. Reeds are a long grassy material and very spongy to walk on. The islands are about 2 meters thick, half reed grass and half reed roots with dirt.

A bunch of reeds in front of a reed house on Q'otomarca, one of the floating islands.

 Local taxi for island hopping. The boat is also made out of reeds. This is an older one, fresher ones aren't so saggy at the ends.

Another type of reed boat. Not sure how sturdy it is.


ISLA DEL SOL

Isla del Sol is a few hours by boat from Copacabana on the Bolivian side of Titicaca Lake.  There are some Inca ruins on the Island as well. We walked along the ridge of the island from the northern port to the southern port. The walk was really nice and the scenery beautiful.

View over the bay and the snowy mountain tops from Isla del Sol.

 Donkeys carrying water supplies.


COPACABANA

A quiet little town on the Bolivian side of the Lake. It's much nicer than Puno, the town we stayed in on the Peruvian side of the Lake.

All kinds of different popped grains in huge bags.  I've never seen big old popcorn like that!

Crossing the Lake at a narrower part on our way to La Paz.

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu here we come! No, we didn't hike the Inka trail...we just took the train. And the train ride through the Sacred Valley up to Aguas Calientes was super nice! I couldn't stop staring through the roof windows up the steep, steep mountains. The panorama in this area is crazy beautiful.

There are great "termas" in Aguas Calientes. This is how we got ready for our big day at Machu Picchu, and how we relaxed after.  : )

 See the red stamp on that paper? That's our entry ticket to Wayna Picchu. Know what we had to do to get that stamp? I can tell you it wasn't easy!
We got up at 3am and started hiking to the first gate at the bottom of a steep, steep mountain. On our way, we walked past the bus station  which already had a long line with people waiting for the first bus leaving at 5.30am to take them up there. Instead of taking the bus, we decided to hike up the stairs to Machu Picchu. At the first gate we had to wait til 4.45am for the guard to open the gate. He wouldn't even take a bribe, as we heard he did the day before, to let us in early because his boss was right there with him. Luckily we got up early enough and were almost first in line.  Once the gate opened, we started hiking up a lot of very steep stairs in the dark. The pace was quite fast and it had a competitive drive to it. Everyone really wanted to be early in the next line and guarantee that they get their stamp for Wayna Picchu. The altitude wasn't a problem here. Staying in Cuzco helped us adjust to the high altitude - it's at 3400m (11200ft) above sea level. Machu Picchu is only at about 2700m (8900ft).  It took us 45 min to get up to the real entry gate and as you can see we got our stamp. There are only 400 visitors per day allowed up Wayna Picchu, 200 at 8 and 200 at 11am. Here you can see why it's such a wanted entry ticket:

Wayna Picchu is the tall mountain directly behind the top pink flower and you can hike to the very top of it.

 When we first got to Machu Picchu, 'the lost city',  it was still foggy and had a very mystic feel to it.

Watching the sun rise over the mountain and lighting up Incan ruins was worth getting up so early.

Our entry slot for Wayna Picchu was between 10 and 11 am. We lined up a little bit before 11 and just as our little group of 4 was about to enter and sign into the log book, the guide stopped us. "400 people already entered today, you can't go up." WHAT??? Really? The last four people in line? You have to be kidding! All that hiking and waiting in line for nothing? No way! We tried to sweet talk the guy telling him it's not fair and we had done everything we were supposed to do to be let in, and he wasn't budging. So we just kind of pushed our way in a bit and argued with him a little. Finally we were allowed in. That was close!

It was one of the steepest hikes I've ever done. No security rail around the trail and the edge is super steep. Here you can see some of narrow stairs on the Wayna Picchu trail. This first one actually had a rope to help you pull yourself up.

Here is the proof, we made it to the top of Wayna Picchu.  That lighter patch on the right side is the main part of Machu Picchu.  Tracy and Arunan were super nice company. We were lucky to have shared the adventure with them.

After the steep hike we enjoyed a relaxing moment surrounded by llamas.