Brrrrr

You know you are cheap when you shop at used clothing stores....in Bolivia. Yesterday I was cold and it is only going to get colder this week (the salar will get 10 below freezing at least). I found a store that sells used clothes from the US and bought a huge XL ugly coat and ski pants for $12. Now I will look even more ridiculous than I already do, but I´ll be warmer. We arrived in Uyuni last night at midnight and bad news: my camera partially melted on the train sitting on a heater. It still works, thankfully, but its really hard to press the button to take pictures and to use the zoom. We walked a couple miles to a train graveyard today and it was bizarre. There were hundreds of rusted broken traincars just sitting around. The ground all around was covered in trash. We passed by cow skulls, horns, and even a dead puppy. Pretty gruesome. The old trains are a symbol of imperialism of the past; of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Coca Cola is a symbol of imperialism in Latin America today. No matter how rural the place we are, there is always Coca Cola, it is inescapable.

Tupiza

We arrived in Tupiza a few days ago and then got sick. If anyone has seen the movie with Robert Redford and Paul Newman ¨Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,¨ Tupiza is near to where the movie ends. If you haven´t seen it, I highly recommend it. The outlaws met their end after robbing a nearby bank and then were killed in the surrounding area. I went on a hike to a canyon the second day here and it was gorgeous. Yesterday we went on a 5hr horse ride through the desert, but my horse had a name, Sanchez. Today I am really sore because I am not used to riding horses and am not the most adept cowboy anyway. It was incredibly beautiful, cacti everywhere, red colored formations of stone, and passageways eroded through the rock. We are leaving on a train later this afternoon to Uyuni, our last stop in Bolivia, where we plan to see the salt flats and lagoons. Then its off to Chile. I have been reading Che Guevara´s diary while he was in Boliva and where he was eventually killed; it is an interesting read. The biggest news of the day is that I took a shower this morning, yes, and only 15 days into the trip. I feel much better.

Bolivia

La Paz is the highest capital city in the world and I must have walked through the entire thing. We thought we were going to be staying in the hostel that we had reserved online, but it was really two beds in a guy´s living room area. A strange, but overall, good experience. The guy we stayed with had an argentine friend that dressed more or less like a sea captain and I got to talk to him about Argentine history. Chad bought a quena (andean flute) and I bought a charango, a small ten stringed guitarish instrument. Yesterday we got a music lessons and then decided to go watch the new Indiana Jones movie which was ironically set in South America. Bolivia is so cheap. I got two entire dinners for $2, and our living room stay was $2.50 a night. Last night we took a bus to Potosi where we are now. It is supposedly the highest city in the world and and it sure is cold. During the Spanish colonial period, Potosi was the largest city in Latin America. People came here because of cerro rico, a large mountain overlooking the city that was practically filled with silver. Millions of indigenous and African people died in the mines. Today, there isnt much silver left, but people still mine for zinc, etc. Today, we took a tour of an active mine. The government owns the mountain, but groups of cooperative miners pay to work a section of it. We descended a few hundred feet crouched over, wearing headlamps and everything. The miners worship devils called tios for protection and they offer them alcohol, coca leaves, and cigarettes. Today was a sacred festival for miners and we just happened to be here to witness maybe the craziest thing I´ve seen. When we finally came back to the surface of the mine, the entrance had blood splatterings on it. We came out into the light minutes before a group of miners and their families sacrificed the second and final llama for their celebration. I was 10 ft away when they cut through its throat, collected the blood in bowls and splashed it eerily above doorways and entrances to the mine. They do this for good luck and even wipe some of it on their faces. A lady came up to me with her hands dripping blood and tried repeatedly to wipe it on my face, but I wouldnt let her. We were invited to join the festival and were offered handfuls of coca leaves, shots of liquor and beer; mind you this was before 1pm. But oh well, why am I here if not to experience culture? Before drinking the alcohol they splash a little on the ground in honor of Pachamama, the mother earth goddess of the andean people. Yep, it was a crazy day. Tomorrow we are going to Tupiza to ride horsies and bikes.

Saying goodbye to Peru

Two days ago we arrived in Puno, a port city on the coast of Lake Titicaca. We took a tour of the floating islands which are inhabited by a group of indigenous people who build islands out of reeds and have lived on the lake since before Inca times. Yesterday morning we took a bus to Desaguadero, the border town between Peru and Bolivia. The local bus we took cost $2 and we were the only tourists, we were crammed in there with my big pack across our laps, sweating and hoping the ride would end soon. It was a beautiful ride though, we went around the lake and there were snow capped peaks in the distance. Once the ride was finally over, we had all the necessary documents including passport, yellow fever vaccine, hotel reservations, picture, proof of economic solvency, and all we needed was an atm to get the $100 entry fee. Oh, but no, there was no atm in the town and we had to bus all the way back to Puno and stay there for the night. So this morning we took the same bus to desaguadero (after visiting an atm in Puno) and got searched, frisked, and asked all sorts of questions by the peruvian police when crossing and then got asked even more questions on the Bolivian side. We finally got our visas and got a bus to La Paz, the capital, for $1.50.

Hygiene update after 8 days
changed socks: once
changed shirts: once
brushed teeth: twice
put on deoderant: twice
changed boxers: zero
showered: zero

And yes I know that that is disgusting.

Túpac Amaru II

Wow, I just realized something when I was walking through the plaza here in Cusco. No one else will probably find this interesting but today is the day that in 1781 Túpac Amaru II was executed right here in the plaza of Cusco after watching his family killed. He was the leader of an indigenous uprising in 1780 against the Spanish rule and abuses of indigenous people. It was unsuccessful, but he became the martyr and mythical figure in Peruvian struggle for independence and different indigenous rights movements. In 1984, a marxist-leninist group rose up in Peru and called themselves the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement and captured and held the Japanese embassy hostage in 1996. Also the rapper Tupac Shakur is named after him. Today there have been parades all day for a religious holiday that is coming up, but there was only a small gathering this morning of maybe 15 people talking about Tupac Amaru. I couldnt figure out why they were talking about him, but later I found a plaque in the plaza. Sorry to bore everyone with history but I thought it was interesting.

Exploring more of Cusco

The past couple of days, I have been wandering around Cusco and the surrounding area. Chad and I went to Sacsayhuaman (pronounced Sexy Woman), an old Inca fortress above the city. Yesterday was incredible. I had already been to Machu Picchu last year so Chad went alone and I stayed here. I took a local bus where I was the only tourist to a small village one hour away. On the bus I talked to a guy from Cusco about peruvian politics and the impending free trade agreement with Europe. Once in the village I meandered through the colorful market and then started hiking to some Inca ruins. I hiked up for a couple hours through Inca terraces until I reached the beginning of the ruins. I had the whole mountain to myself and just sat in a dilapidated overgrown Inca house and looked out at the most unbelievable views. I hiked longer, and then my solitude was ruined by a busload of tourists looking at one of the ruins, but I continued hiking for a couple more hours, sometimes on ledges a yard wide with a 150 ft drop. Later I took the bus back to Cusco and then got a ticket to the Cienciano game. Cienciano is the local professional soccer team who won the south america championships in 2004. I sat next to a little kid who told me who the players were and all about it. The game was nuts. There were three or four brawls between the teams and the field is surrounded by a barbed wire fence to control the rowdy fans. Throughout the game, dozens of riot police used their shields to guard the opposing players while they were kicking corners from the onslaught of trash being hurled down onto the field. At the end of the game, when the opposing team left the field the police made a tunnel with their shields because the Cienciano fans were throwing all kinds of stuff down on them. The fans had drums, trumpets, flags, toilet paper and some even lit flares and shot off fireworks. All in all, it was awesome. Today, as I await my travel companion´s return, I watched a parade here in Cusco. Tomorrow we are taking a bus to Puno, the port town on Lake Titicaca and then we go to Bolivia.

Cusco

We flew to Cusco yesterday. This is my second time coming to Cusco, it is my favorite city of all that I have been to. Inca stonework under spanish colonial buildings. Warm during the day, cold at night. Up high at 9,000 ft in the Andes. Another note on drugs, we were offered weed at least 15 times yesterday. We found a hostel for $4.50 a night and had delicious alpaca steaks for lunch. I bought a small bag of coca leaves from an indigenous woman and chad and I chewed wads of them mixed with gum to hold off some of the affects of the altitude. Coca chewing is an ancient tradition in the Andes, predating the Incas by thousands of years. I am hoping to find some chicha, beer made from chewed up corn that is sold in rural areas in the mountains. Our room in the hostel was oddly decorated, we had a picture of Jesus on one wall and on the other a painting of a naked woman with a mullet and sideburns smoking a cigarette. Last night I froze. I had on three shirts, sweatshirt, jeans, socks, was under three blankets, and even had on my tobaggan, but I was still freezing. I just checked the weather and it got down to 34F last night. Our room was probably not much warmer than that because we have open cracks to the outside haha. Such are the Andes.

First few days in Peru

We arrived in Lima at 4am after flying all night and tried to nap on the floor of the airport. After finally finding plane tickets to Cusco for the next day, we set out for the center of the city. A taxi from the airport costs $20 but we rode the local minvan packed out buses with our big backpacks and got there for only 60 cents and some weird looks. This trip is already different than past visits to Latin America. After taking lots of history and poli classes on Latin America, I am able to understand this place on a deeper level. I have already talked for hours with different peruvians about politics and peruvian history. Chad and I saw the president at the main square, and yesterday Peru hosted a conference with leaders from all over Latin America and Europe...noticeably absent, the US. I feel content in Latin America, and even though this is my fourth trip in one year, I was already missing it. That is some assurance that even though my major doesnt have too many jobs, its right for me. After touring the catacombs at a 16th century church, we met Pedro who wanted to talk to us to practice his english. We spent the rest of the day with him and he was kind of nuts. At dinner, he kept ordering more and more 650 ml beers for us to split and told us about his casual use of cocaine. He asked us repeatedly to do lines with him, but finally gave up after mentioning it 10 times.