Thursday, May 17, 2001

New photos are up...however, I've been having trouble posting for the last two weeks.

Thursday, May 17, 2001

It´s been a crazy last couple of days. While in Nasca I ran into posting problems and had to e-mail it to myself to post later...you can read it below.

Since leaving Nasca we have travelled to Arequipa, Chivay, Colca Canyon, back to Arequipa, Juliahaca, and now we´re in Puno. Puno is about 4,000 meters...14,000 feet or so. The highest we reached while travelling to Chivay was 4,680 meters (around 16,000 feet). It´s a small town on the edit of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world (so I guess there are higher lakes, but no one cares to use them), featuring steep streets and a peculiar dialect of spanish (that´s even noticeable to me).

Our stay in Arequipa was very good. Arequipa has far and away been the loveliest city we´ve seen in Peru. Good food, clean city, nice people: everything that Nasca isn´t. It was the change of pace we desperately needed...I encourage anyone travelling to Peru to visit Arequipa. A very nice city.

From Arequipa we had a tour scheduled to take us to Chivay and the Colca Canyon. It was a long 4 hour van ride to Chivay. Very few of the roads are paved, most are dirt or rock. However it is scenic. Travelling through the Andes can give you some perspective I suppose, as so many thoughts about what I´m doing, will be doing, and have done, cycled through my head. Our path took us past a couple volcanoes and lots of earthquake prone land, as the path in my thinking lead me to many different destinations.

Most of the time though I just thought, "wow...I´m actually doing this."

We had a good group for the tour: an older couple from Belgium, an early 30´s fellow from England, a couple from Lima, an older guy from Lima, a middle-aged guy from Finland, and then us. Lisa, being her outgoing self, connected very well with everyone in the group; while I probably spent more time absorbing everything and listening.

Along the way to Chivay we stopped at a few points to take pictures and drink Coco tea...coco obviously being from the coco leaf, which is the primary ingredient in cocaine. I had bought a bag of coco leaves in Arequipa and was already chewing on them with the Finnish fellow...the coco tea, though, was very good. There´s not intoxicating effect, but it is fine tasting and soothing.

There were alpaca ranches everywhere and many ornately dressed women working in the fields. We came to later find out that these women dress this way b/c it represents the floral and fauna of the area...not because they´re hippies. Another interesting point worth mentioning about the dress is the hat. In this area you see many different kinds of hats. It turns out that what kind of hat you wear says to the others what sort of tribe you come from. So, to explain this, you must know that there are two local Volcanoes: El Misti and...the other one (I forget the name). One tribe declared that they´re people came from one volcano while the other tribe declared that they came from the other (far-fetched..definitely, but also realize that the Christian faith has believed in the literal interpretation of the Garden of Eden for nearly 2 millenia; although I´m sure you would be hard-pressed to find literal believers nowadays). So the shape of their hats symbolize the volcanoes: one is tall and thin, the other short and squat. This seemed a lot better than their previous method which was to attach ropes to the heads of newborns and shape their heads into the shape of the volcano. Oh boy.

Chivay is a small village completely surrounded by mountains. Contrasting the stark grays and whites of the mountains, it is green and lush. It was decidedly untouristy...which was surprising given the popularity of Colca Canyon, and hosted people seemingly more intent on subsisting and furthering their culture than turning a profit or improving their lot. Our hotel was located in a field just outside of the village. Surprisingly, it had hot water (but a space heater for the room was 5 soles more...unlike our room here in Puno, where we do not have the option of renting a heater) and was quiet: the first quiet room we had stayed in to date.

For lunch I had Alpaca, the Llama like animal known more for its sweaters than its meat. It wasn´t bad but after seeing just how cute these animals were, it made it a somewhat hard meal to swallow. Later that afternoon we all headed to the hot springs and chilled out in volcano heated water. After the long bus rides we had had over the course of three or so days, the water did wonders for our bones. Not surprisingly, we saw quite a few people who we had seen travelling through Pisco and Nasca.

That night we all met up for dinner at one of the few local restaurants and enjoyed a local band. They were all teenagers but played their native music (with the addition of an electric bass and some drums). It was a fun time! The altitude seems to have the effect of lowering your tolerance to alcohol because many of us were buzzed...and when one of the dancers came over to grab me, I proudly strolled out in front of place and did my dance. I did my white-boy, robot dance...arms up at 90 degrees and my torso shifting side to side as my feet moved up in down in perfect 4/4 rhythm. I was the absolute contrast to the fluid latin american movements of the dancers and provided my group with a moment of complete disbelief. They all looked to Lisa for permission to laugh, since no one knew if I was being serious or not. It was a good night with good food and good music (at least different music if nothing else), it definitely provided us with the most laughter thus far.

Early next morning...5:30am...we were up and eating breakfast. We headed for Colca Canyon.

Colca Canyon is this hundred mile ridge that cuts through the mountains and is the cradle of a very old pre-incan civilization. The terraces cut into the hills are thousands of years old, yet are still used for modern farming. Everywhere you see water

Thursday, May 17, 2001

I think the big lesson learned from this experiment is that web based content tools aren't quite ready for world travellers. Given the kinds of problems I've been running into, I think a tool residing on my server (like greymatter) would make a much better solution. There have just been too many variables as I hopscotch from one web cafe to another.

As I said, we're back in Lima for the night. Tomorrow we fly out to Ecuador...I'm still not sure whether it will be Guayaquil or Quito. If it is Quito, then we'll be doing a jungle trek for sure before we hit the beaches. If Guayaquil, then we may just hit the beaches.

The last couple weeks I've stayed on an island with a native family, driven through the desert, ridden trains, floated in boats made out of reeds, eaten alpaca, watched condors fly, seen scorpio and the southern cross, walked around machu pichu, visited churches and ruins, and drank beers in an irish pub in the middle of Cuzco's Plaza de Armis. Only slight altitude sickness and diarrhea have plagued these adventures.

Out stay with the local native family has to be one of the more interesting experiences I've had in awhile. Anantami Island is in the middle of Lake Titicaca...very close to the Bolivian border actually (and Peruvians, as I have found, are quite proud of the fact that 60% of the lake is Peru's), and houses a native culture indigious to the island. Mainly, they speak Quecha...some are bilingual in Spanish though. The family we stayed with (like all of the inhabitants) did not have electricity or plumbing; nor did they like sharing their meat with guests. It was a four hour boat ride to the island, where the Lake air gets very chilly and the waves can get quite rough. Just over the Bolivian horizon was a storm coming our way...I think all of us knew this was going to be a big reality check.

I'll have to stop short (simply b/c I think much of it will get cut off when I try to publish), but there is a lot to this story. Till next time, ciao.