Wow,

 

We finally escaped the tourist crowds of southern Peru for a breath of fresh air on the shores of Lago Titicaca, the birthplace of the first Inca and the highest navigable lake in the world at 3810m. Unfortunately, at 3810m the air is clean but very, very thin and several nights sleep were interupted with gasping, oxygen starved respirations..... It was, however, very beautiful. We deceided to take a trip on the lake to explore some of the islands and our first stop was the Uros floating islands. Its a whole community built on separate floating reed islands originally built 1200 years ago to escape Incan expansion. The comunities were incredible and the best part was if you don´t like your neighbor you just cut yourself free and float to another location!! Next up was Amantani and Taquile islands, only a couple of kms apart but with different cultures and languages. We stayed on Amantani with a Quechua woman named Francesca, a lovely lady who took us to a local fiesta and taught us a couple of Quechua dances to boot. We looked bad and sweated our butts off in spite of the 5 degree temperatures in the borrowed local Alpaca wool traditional dress. Good times had by all!!

 

After our island trip we headed around the shores of Lago Titicaca to the Bolivian side of the lake, and spent a couple of days at the lakeside town of Copacabana, the place where a couple of miracles took place and from where the name of the Brazilian Copacabana originated!! After a day relaxing we (Cheryl, me and our French partners in stupidity, David and Anne-Claire) decieded to convince the little man who rents kayaks by the hour in the bay that his craft were seaworthy enough to take on a 4 day voyage to some ancient Incan islands/archeological sites. With some convincing, and a bit of money he let us cover the cargo ports with plastic and away we went!! It was a magical paddle. We covered 67kms in 4 days including a 10km open water crossing. The views were undescribable with snow capped mountains rising out of crystal blue waters and we spent our nights at rooms negotiated from little communities we found along the way. Mornings were blessed with calm (cold) water and when the winds picked up in the afternoons we hiked to the Incan ruins and soaked up the atmosphere. It was David and Anne-Claires first kayak trip and they would ¨tweest and Poosh¨ through to the end each day with a lot of laughs along the way. At the village of Chall´ampampa, on the 2nd night, all the village kids turned out to greet our arrival. For sure they had never seen kayaks before and they all lined up to help carry our stuff up to the house we found to stay at. Later that night we took them for rides in the kayaks, you should have seen the little faces!!! The whole trip turned out to be one of the major highlights of the journey so far, fantastic to say the least!!!

 

When we got back, we rested a couple of days in Copacabana and then headed to La Paz. A surprisingly nice city where you can buy your ¨good luck llama foetus¨ to bury under your house on virtually every corner. Strange. From La Paz we organized to ride the Death Road on MTN Bikes. It´s the worlds most dangerous road with the most deaths per traveller of any road in the world so they say. The trip was amazing, 63 kms straight down with a total drop of 3700m. It was fast and dusty with up to 1000m cliffs on one side at times and buses and trucks coming around one lane corners the other way. Needless to say we made it but the irony of a lunch stop at the memorial to a dead Isreali MTN biker who didn´t make it (the only place on the road wide enough for a comfortable stop) wasn´t lost on us at the end. The trip ended down at the start of the Bolivian jungle at an Eco lodge where we found a couple of cold beers. A hot shower and a swim in the pool soothed any residual hurts and anxiety before they drove us back up the same road back to La Paz, the trip back was almost more nerve racking than the ride down!!!!!

 

 Still sticking with Les Bleu we took a train down to Uyuni, a little settlement in the high altiplano right on the edge of the Uyuni Salar, one of what has to be one of the worlds wonders. Its a salt lake more than 2000 square kms in area with a water depth in places up to 120m. But the incredible thing is that the entire top of the lake is a salt layer up to 2 meters thick that you can drive, walk or bike over. The salt is pure white giiving the impression that the lake is frozen and in places there are little ¨oyos¨ or eyes  that you can see down into the salty depths. All that white is crazy on your perspective and we took some really funny pics that you can check out in the photos. The nights gave us the most unbelievable sunsets as well. and in places where the water lay on the surface a couple of cms deep it created a reflection so that you didn´t know where the sky stopped and the lake started, what a place. Further on that same trip we headed up even higher into the mountains at the Chilean border and saw the most surreal lakes and mountain scenery. In one lake the water was bright bright red and the shores were pure white with mineral deposits, with the towering mountains in the background it was a bit like I imagine an acid trip to be like but less expensive, less dangerous and a hell of a lot colder. The wind howled up there and it snowed all of the last day and night making the unheated National Parque refuge just a little nippy. We said goodbye to David and Anne-Claire and left them waiting to cross the border to Chile while we headed back. It turns out that they did get across but the Chileans closed the border for the winter soon after because of the snow and unsafe conditions.

 

After a few days recovering from our tearful adieu with the Frenchies we took another Bolivian torture bus down to Potosi where there is a silver mine/mountain more than 450 years old that the Spanish sucked a lot of their colonial riches out of. In the sucking process, those kooky conquistadors managed to kill off more than a million slaves and locals!! The mine still functions and we took a trip down into the honeycombed Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain) in mines that to this day are still being worked by hand. The coolest part of the tour was that our first stop was at a market to buy gifts for the miners. No I am not talking about Cadburys Roses, I mean 92% pure alcohol (pure alcohol means pure silver), bags and bags of coca leaves for chewing to tolerate the conditions, and dynamite with a little ammonium nitrate for added punch!!! Mines are cool. We bought couple of sticks of dynamite for ourselves as well and our guide showed us how to rig it all up (with the Ammoniun Nitrate as well of course!) then he lit it up and we quickly passed it around for photos (no shit!!!) Finally our guide, with a massive mouthful of coca leaves, viotated all the remaining Workplace Health and Safety rules that were left to violate and ran across the mountain side with 2 lit sticks of Dymanite yelling Fire in the Hole or at least the spanish equivilent and all the other miners who were just minding their own buisiness scattered. He buried the lit sticks in a shallow hole and then ran like hell. The only people remaining not completely covered at this point was our group (worrying) so we all cowered behind a little wall. BLAM!!!! You should have heard the first blast!!! It knocked us all on our butts screaming incantations to whichever god we favored!! The second one was just as powerfull but at least we were a little prepared! Awesome. If any of you get a chance to blow stuff up I highly recommend it!! After that the tour started and we scrambled down into the ancient mines crawling around, on our hands and knees in places, and holding ropes to descend shafts in others. The whole day was amazing.

 

The next day was a little more cultured as we toured the old mints and museums of Potosi. Then, just like that, Bolivia was finished for us and all that remained was the 20 hour Bolivian torture bus ride to the Argentinian Border. The bus was only slightly more dangerous than the mines but with less explosions, and we made it stiff but safe and sound.

 

The Argentinian border heralded a whole new world of good coffee, fine food, paved roads and safe, domestic animal-less cities. We were like country kids in downtown Toronto and we will tell you all about it later...

 

Hasta Luego Chicos, stay safe.

 

Jay and Cheryl