A silver bridge to Spain: Potosi

Both Oruro and Potosi lie at the very heart of Bolivia´s long, rich, and tragic mining history. While both cities continue to mine actively, Potosi has always been the bigger site with greater historical significance. In fact, in the 17th century, Potosi was the most important city in the western hemisphere--it was bigger than London or Paris at the time.

The source of this importance and fame was an obscenely rich silver deposit underneath a mountain called ¨Cerro Rico¨(Rich hill) which towers above the town. As soon as a few Spaniards got wind that the mountain was practically leaking silver, the fate of the people there (and many would say the fate of the country) was pretty much sealed. Over the course of the next several hundred years, silver mining, and more recently tin mining, has played a central part in Bolivia´s social and economic history, with Potosi as the site of several battles, and with miners at the center of several political upheavals and revolutions (including a miner blowing himself up at the capital with dynamite as recently as 2001). All told, the wealth that was taken from Potosi back to the Spanish crown is so great that it is said that you could construct a bridge, spanning from Potosi across the ocean to Madrid, made entirely of the silver they extracted.



Probably because of this significant history, Potosi is also home to a number of Bolivian cultural traditions, including the charango, that cool tiny instrument we mentioned earlier. It is culturally and historically significant enough to be a UNESCO World Heritage site. Our plans in town were pretty straightforward: to visit the center of Bolivia´s mining and monetary history, La Casa de la Moneda, and to pay a visit to a mine.

The Casa de la Moneda was Spain´s mint (and after independence, Bolivia´s mint) all the way until the 1950s or so. So much silver was being produced from Cerro Rico that when the Spaniards began using coinage, it was probably much easier to just produce the coins at the source. You can tell how important this site was to the Spaniards: at the time, it was one of only three mints in their empire: Lima, Mexico City, and Potosi. Now the site houses an extensive museum including bits of history from the mining and coining days, but also hosts a fair degree of Bolivian art, Bolivian minerals, and ostentatious silver products of the times. We particularly enjoyed checking out all the coins from across history as well as the intact simple mechanical machinery that they used to power the smelting of silver and the stamping of the coins. These massive donkey-and/or slave-powered apparatuses were hauled all the way from Spain, across the Andes, piece by piece, until they were assembled in Bolivia some 14 months later. Engineers, check out the ¨precision¨of the interlocking gear ratios, made entirely out of wood.



o



The next thing on the list was to visit a mine. There were a number of tours that offered comprehensive tours of the mines, replete with hours and hours of crawling around through extremely cramped, noxious tunnels with sludge and slurry underfoot. Yes, they take tourists through active mining sites. In a way, this is ¨gonzo¨tourism, with people who go on these tours getting a pretty real (and thus miserable) perspective on the horrible realities of mining. Yet as hilarious as certain male-model movie scenes might be, we both felt that it wasn´t quite right to pretend to know the miners´experience with 3 hours of crawling through their mine while in reality theirs is a [short] lifetime of backbreaking, toxic labor.

With a healthy respect for their work and our own privilege, we decided on a much more subtle and admittedly convenient view on the mines: a quick visit to El Tio, the Lord of the underworld. This folkloric figure is said to oversee everything in the mines, including life, death, and bounty, and the fervent belief among miners is that El Tio will look after them if they look after him. So every day, at every separate tunnel entrance to every mine in Bolivia, miners (and visitors) will give El Tio a gift in return for his protection while they are inside. Mostly these gifts are in the form of vices like alcohol or cigarrettes. Since we didn´t have these on us, we though he might enjoy some orange Trident gum after his smokes and some coca candy to help with his hangover. See the side bar of this article for more info. on the El Tio legend as well as a review of what is said to be an excellent documentary on mining in Potosi.

Did we mention that we chose to visit this scary character in the middle of an unlit mine, with no flashlights, on Halloween? In Bolivia, they don´t really celebrate Halloween, although we did see a few kids´parades that were getting into the act, so give it a few years and the 31st will probably be a big holiday. What they do celebrate is called Dia de todos Santos, and it holds a more solemn significance than our Halloween or even Mexico´s Dia de los Muertos. Usually the holiday falls on the first 2 or 3 days of November. So on the 31st, we did see the town gearing up for the holiday, selling boatloads of bright pink bread and donuts (don´t they look like Homer´s favorite donuts on the Simpsons?), as well as special breads that are shaped like bodies and adorned with porcelain painted faces. These are the items that in the next two days will be placed beside the grave sites of the departed.



After our trip to the mine, we met two fellow travellers, Joanna and Julia, and struck up a friendship with them that would develop into several days of travelling together to our next destination, the official and unofficial capital of Bolivia, the ¨White city¨of Sucre.

Bolivian Badlands: Oruro and onward to Potosi

We departed La Paz in the morning and caught a decent-enough bus to Oruro. Most travellers would skip this town and head straight to Potosi, where there are a lot more places of interest. But I wanted to see Oruro because that`s the town where my mom was born. Other than that though, even other Bolivians say there`s not much reason to go there if it isn`t Carnaval. (During Carnaval, though, Oruro is THE place to be in all of South America!).

Oruro is a gritty town, in character and in...well, grit. The outskirts lie on a completely unprotected desert plain, which allows for an unceasing wind to tear through the area in violent and dusty gusts. On our way into town, we saw several maestroms of dirt blasting through several of the peripheral neighborhoods. It would have reminded us of the great Oklahoma dust bowl, had we actually been there.

Although the gritty intro to the town made us question how much time we wanted to spend there, I also absorbed my mom`s hometown with a fair degree of pride and admiration. I think of her as an extremely brave, tenacious, and resolute woman, and the sparse, tough town reflects these traits in spades. Taking in the harsh, ragged town where she was born served as an origin story of sorts, personifying the strength of her roots as if by the destiny of the place.

Matt! and I were able to book our next bus for about 40 minutes after we arrived. So we used that time to get to know the town beyond the bus station at the outskirts of town. In other words, we grabbed a taxi for a 5 minute ride to the plaza at the center of town, spent about 15 minutes there, and took a taxi back. That`s some efficient sight-seeing! But that little trip also added another great dimension to our Oruro visit. Further from the outskirts, the center of town is much more protected from the elements, and the plaza was one of the nicest we had seen throughout the whole trip. We were both really glad we made the effort to get a more complete picture of the place. Plus we bought some delicious donuts on the plaza for our lunch.

Donuts in hand, we continued on to Potosi, with several things to look forward to on the ride. Earlier, when I had wanted to theme our trip according to funny place names, Lago Poopo became a must-see destination in my mind, and luckily it was on the way! We also passed through some truly legitimate indigenous dwellings, and observed the ruins of some Tihuanaco (pre-Inca) funeral pyres among other unexplained round structures. And, so far from the tourist stops, we finally saw llamas as they are authentically raised--not just for photo opps within the cities. Herds and herds of llamas grazed freely along the slopes by the roadway, or loosely penned in by makeshift uncemented brick walls precariously stacked and miraculously untoppled by the wind. Finally, we were treated to a spectacular sunset across two canyons of the Altiplano before arriving into Potosi that night.

All in all, a great day on and off the bus.

La Paz: Loose soil, long lost friends, long lost wallet

The topography (geographical and physical) of La Paz makes it one of the most interesting cities on the planet. Arriving from the Altiplano, the city appears out of nowhere from beneath the flat plain like a gaping mouth full of red brick and tile.

The rim and walls of the canyon that nestles La Paz are covered with houses, slums, or buildings constructed on every habitable* space. Unlike most cities, the wealthy live at the bottom of the hills, and the poorest slums occupy the hilltops. The nicer neighborhoods further down in the valley benefit from warmer weather, sheltered from the harsh altiplano winds. Meanwhile, the slums are built at the very top are placed where there is the only room to grow--out of the bowl and onto the plains. At the top, El Alto, once considered only a slum of La Paz, has now grown so much that it is now Bolivia's third largest city.

* See description of Valle de la Luna below.

We were extremely fortunate to have a contact in La Paz: A long-lost friend of my mother's who I hadn't seen in about 18 years. Jackie used to live near my family in Arkansas, and a few years back she moved back to Bolivia. I looked her up and she was generous enough to host us in her lovely home with her awesome husband Lucho and rad son Sebi. Her hospitality turned what I thought would be a stressful stay in a crazy city into an unexpected chance to explore real life in La Paz and discover some of the coolest spots in Bolivia. It was also a chance to gain several pounds over a few days of delicious (and relentless!) home cookin'.

We spent the days exploring various parts of the city, uphill and downhill. We gorged on ice cream in the hipster modern part of town (which featured full blown quality coffee shops to Matt!'s delight), and passed through the old, narrow streets of the witches' market, where you can buy llama fetuses and other supernatural items that'll cure what ails ya. One night, we also went out to a Peña, a very fun and expeditious way to learn about a wide range of Bolivia's culture in just one evening. Peñas occur at a bar or restaurant, and they feature musical acts and dances from various areas of the country. Our particular MC and lead musician was really lively and talented, with a well-honed knack for being able to rock out tunes from everyone's country of origin on the Charango.

We were lucky to catch Jackie and her family on a weekend, so on that Sunday, we all went for an action-packed outing where we first visited the otherworldly Valle de La Luna (Valley of the Moon). Visiting this place is unsettling, not only because of the mystical landscape and soil formations, but also because upon inspecting these very loose and eroded structures, you realize that this is exactly the kind of soil that all of La Paz is built upon. Skyscrapers and houses across the entire canyon are built on what can be best described as slightly encrusted termite hills. Luckily, La Paz doesn't seem to be near any significant seismic activity. After Valle de la Luna, we drove to the bottom of the canyon to the agricultural valley where Jackie and Lucho have a small plot of land where they grow corn and veggies. And yes, we ate some of that corn later and it was delicious.

By the way, one of the best parts of this visit was hanging out with Jackie's 7 year old son Sebi. He's a great kid who's really into wrestling and all the other normal kid stuff. So, we had to get into the act as well. And note the awesome satirical wrestling poster that he found poking fun at all of Bolivia's political figures:

The only downside of this particular visit is that I joined the ranks of everyone else that I know that have been robbed in La Paz. It is a long story, but I'll just echo my mom's sentiment that Bolivians, particularly in La Paz, are the best thieves in the world. I made the mistake of leaving my wallet off my person (in a very snug chest jacket pocket with a difficult zipper), and it was either pickpocketed in an impossibly imperceptible way while we were walking the streets, or knicked for the brief period that I hung the jacket on a chair during coffee. In either case, I am left in awe at how suave and skilled the thieves were. The prime suspect? the smiling, gracious waiter at the cafe. Word to the wise: always keep your wallet in a place where you can feel it on your body--like your crotch. or at least in your front leg pockets. Because even though your jacket might be crammed into the most inaccessible corner of the most gringo restaurant with someone watching it, that doesn't make it safe around the most talented artisans of La Paz.

Well, I can't end on a sour note, so here's some more good stuff: In addition to hitting up the town, Matt! and I each got our own chances to do some side trips solo. I went for a truly Xtreme, wicked mountain bike ride (all singletrack, all downhill) with Gravity Bolivia, and Matt! took a trip up to Chacaltaya, the world's highest ski area at 18,274 feet. His trip was one of the most convenient ways to reach such a high altitude in less than a day. From there he was able to see some of the more spectacular peaks of the Cordillera surrounding the city.

By the way, now that I'm travelling without a credit card or debit card, I'm running up a tab with Matt until we get back. Has anyone borrowed money from Matt! before? Don't. The man is ruthless. His usury knows no bounds. I'm getting a sub-sub-prime interest rate and if I come home in a wheelchair with two broken knees, and bruises on my face, it is probably because he decided to collect early.

Flamingos, fish, and beer-soaked cars: Copacabana

Given the ordeal getting to Puno and the extra time it took to file the police reports, Matt! suggested that instead of trying to get to La Paz all in one day that same afternoon, we head to Copacabana, which would take less time. Copacabana is a lovely resort-ish town on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca, and I had kind of wanted to take the scenic route through there anyway, so his plan was genius.

Thankfully, we had one last experience in Peru that allowed us to leave without a sour taste in our mouth. Walking through Puno back to the bus station, we swung by a small little cafe across from the university. This was far from where gringos normally congregate, since most simply go from the bus station straight to the floating islands. In addition to a tasty lunch, we met the friendliest cafe owner who was genuinely interested in talking to us, and particularly gracious and hospitable. Even some other cafe patrons took a kind interest in us, and we were proud to declare that yes, people from the U.S. do sometimes go off the beaten path and eat where the locals eat. It was a great pick-me-up after the evening before and we got on the bus to Bolivia in high spirits.


On the way to Bolivia, we kept getting great glimpses of the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca, including my first views of the pink flamingos that live in the area. We crossed the border at the town of Yunguyo, almost avoided paying the newly instituted $135 visa fee (drat!), and in no time we were in a taxi with three cholas (and their buckets of fish) headed toward Copacabana.






We didn´t have much on our agenda that night, except to try some trout from the lake, and to absorb some of Copacabana´s weekender charm, especially around the beach and the gleaming white moorish Catedral de Copacabana that presides over the town. The cathedral honors the Virgen de Copacabana, and she´s so important that people come from across Bolivia to seek her blessing. The best part is that when people purchase a new car (even as far away as La Paz), they will take their car to Copacabana on a Saturday morning so that the car can also be blessed, protecting the owner and any passengers that it will carry throughout its lifetime. We witnessed this ceremony on our way out of town, and it was fun to see a parade of cars decorated in flowers and wreaths, being doused with beer and holy water.

That last item of note from Copacabana will be of particular interest to our Alaskan friends who are familiar with the state ferry. Bolivians have a distinctly less-organized and decentralized approach toward carrying vehicles across expanses of water: Why note a rickety, wobbly barge for every vehicle, and separate speedboats for all the passengers?

Where in the world is Bolivia, anyway?

Ok, we´re now at least a week behind on posting, so it is time to catch up on what we´ve been up to in Bolivia. Do all the readers out there know that this is a homecoming of sorts for me? My Mom was born in Bolivia, so I´ve actually visited this country several times throughout my life, but this is the first time that I´m seeing more than just my family´s tropical home city of Santa Cruz.

Bolivia´s geography has fundamentally shaped the character of the different regions, so it is probably best to start with a quick lesson in the lay of the land. Starting from the West, from where we entered Bolivia in Copacabana, it is highland mountain territory. The huge steppe that runs north to south along and in between some ranges of the Andes is known as the Altiplano. This whole area is at a consistently high altitude, ranging from 9000 to 14000 feet (the peaks range much higher with the highest, Nevado Sajama at 21, 463 feet). La Paz is at around 12,000 feet, but luckily we´d already been altitude acclimated in Cuzco at about 11,000 feet.

Moving from West to East, the Altiplano gradually loses altitude until the sparse high plains transition into arable desert lands and canyons in the middle altitudes (very similar to New Mexico and Arizona), and continuing East into the tropical lowlands. (Continuing East all the way past Santa Cruz would land you in Brazil´s tropical plains). Roughly speaking, the Amazon areas are in the North and Northeast, and the excessively dry desert plains (such as the Salar de Uyuni) are in the Southwest.

Ok, that´s enough of a geography lesson. The quick take-away is that Bolivia is incredibly diverse: geographically, and by extension, culturally. You might imagine that this diversity would cause some rifts in Bolivian society, and you´d be right. Very roughly speaking, and very crudely labelling, there are at least two axes on which to place any given Bolivian: Indigeno or Mestizo, referring to whether someone has indigenous Andean blood (e.g. Quechua or Aymara), or whether they come from mixed blood (Spanish/European--¨white¨) descent. I must repeat that these are tremendously crude distinctions, because over the course of centuries, these two cultures have lived together, humped and intertwined, and have thus adapted to each other, so that the racial distinction is most informative only at the two opposite ends of the spectrum, and my opinion is that most Bolivians (at least in the major cities) fall somewhere in between.

The other gradient on which to describe Bolivians is geographic: The crude terms for these are ¨Collas¨ from the highland states, and ¨Cambas¨from the lowland states. Although each area uses the terms for the others somewhat derogatorily, in my mind these are meaningful distinctions because you can definitely notice the differences between Cambas and Collas in terms of their style of speech and mannerisms.

More recently, all of these geographic and cultural differences have manifested themselves in a great deal of political turmoil. Without a doubt, this is nothing new. Just about all of Bolivia´s history has been characterized by unrest, uprisings, overthrows, and instability. I´ll only mention the most recent conflicts with the most recent President, since this stage of history is particularly interesting, and for our visit, quite omnipresent. It will also inform several upcoming Blog posts. And I will only give the Cliff´s notes version. Let´s see how quickly I can summarize:

In 2005, Bolivia elected its first indigenous Aymara president, a guy named Evo Morales. This made international news. Given his broad political base (about 60% approval rating nationwide), he had the latitude to start shaking up the status quo, especially with regard to giving more to the historically underrepresented (yet majority) indigenous, poor population. On paper, this was obviously a good power-to-the-people story. But there´s a lot more to it. Several observers (including my family) hold quite a bit of concern about Evo´s reckless style of governing, his appointment of cronies to important technocratic cabinet positions, regardless of expertise or education, his past as the leader of the coca grower´s union (linked to cocaine trafficking), his very intimate alliance with Venezuelan populist-turned-dictator Hugo Chavez, and his cavalier and confrontational relationship with the United States. (By the way, I´m not offended that he booted the U.S. ambassador out of the country or that he blasts U.S. imperialism in his rhetoric--that´s fair. What isn´t fair is that these actions, for such an economically dependent country, have serious consequences for his own people). As always, it is difficult to sift through the rhetoric on this--U.S. newspapers probably don´t give the man a fair shake, and leftist/socialist news outlets don´t ever acknowledge the risks and downsides of what he is doing. Sift through it yourself at http://news.google.com, and enter search terms such as ¨Evo Morales¨or ¨Santa Cruz, Bolivia¨or ¨Bolivia constitution.¨ Just one caveat--most of the news refers to Santa Cruz as the ¨rich and white¨part of the country--know that it isn´t that simple, as there are plenty of poor and middle class people in every corner of the country. I don´t think that particular label for Santa Cruz is fair.

What Evo is doing is pretty wide-ranging, and it is at the heart of the recent turmoil. It is a classic federal vs. states´rights issue. With a national majority (centered in the highland states), he has nationalized big chunks of the energy industry and also proposed a big land redistribution program, as well as a pension program for the elderly. Within his base, these are tremendously popular reforms. But they come at the expense of the Camba lowland states, which have been developing their economies based on gas and agricultural revenues. So when Evo says he wants to break up large landholdings to give to the nation´s poor, he´s talking about agriculturally productive land that gives jobs to many middle class Camba Bolivians (including some of my cousins). Similarly, the lowland states used to have more of a say in where their oil and gas revenues went, but now those revenues are being controlled at the federal level and being distributed disproportionately to Evo´s friends and supporters around La Paz and other highland states. All of this is being debated in the lens of a constitutional referendum where Evo wants to make these seismic shifts in redistribution permanent. The lowland states, known as the ¨Medio Luna¨--(¨half-moon¨see the crescent of states from Northeast to Southwest on the map--Pando, Beni, Santa Cruz, and Chuquisaca) have opposed the constitutional changes under the grounds that a) the reforms unfairly favor the highland majority, so the minority protection of federalism is at risk, b) their prior autonomy over locally produced economic growth is being stripped away, and c) that the new constitution gives far too much power to the executive branch, with fears of a full-socialist agenda under a very popular Evo Morales.

This conflict resulted in some violence this past September, and the country was in a a very tense state of panic and instability which had Matt and I worried about whether we´d even be able to visit. It got resolved in recent weeks, with the biggest concession to the Camba states being that Evo would not seek a third presidential term. That seemed to diffuse the violence at least until January, when the new constitution gets put to a vote by the people. It is expected to win, at the expense of lowland autonomy.

Ok, that should give all of you lovely readers a good base of understanding to know where we are in Bolivia and what we´ve been encountering. I promise future posts won´t be nearly this egg-headed. To be sure, most of what we´ve been doing has been our usual fun hijinks and silliness. But some of the most meaningful moments in the country have had all of this in the background.

I´m particularly interested in seeing some comments! (yes, we get lonely when we don´t hear from you). So pipe up and send us a note on any of the posts you read. It really means a lot to us. More stories to come!

Heart of Darkness: The Bus to Puno

¨The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round.*¨


* Additional fees apply. PeruTours LLC reserves the right to prevent said wheels from going around, esp. in conflicting strike zones and abandoned mountain passes. Passengers subject to severe abuse by drivers, operators, and owners, including, but not limited to unexplained delays, stall tactics, slack-jawed dimwittedness on the part of all operators, extortion, and physical assault.



When it comes to purchases in South America, caveat emptor, my friends. The one rule of customer service down here is that once your money is out of your hands, you will never, ever, get it back. Even though this is the status quo, we had the misfortune of choosing a bus company that took this mantra to the next level.



When purchasing a bus ticket, one would assume that the paid fare is to get you to your final destination. In this case, we wanted to get from Cuzco to Puno. Despite the ongoing farmers´strike that most operators said was blocking the roads, TourPeru was selling tickets that would get us to Puno. The ticket counter ladies said that given the strike, they would take alternate routes, and the trip would take about 12 hours instead of the normal 7. Fair enough, it was worth it to jump on the bus at the last minute.



The bus did not take an alternate route. Instead, the bus driver drove directly into the heart of the strike, a farming town called Combapata, just before the real epicenter of unrest, a town called Sicuani. Apparently, he thought it would be fine to take this route since he had come back from Puno to Cuzco the night before via the same way (of course, the only way he had achieved this was with a heavy police escort for a caravan of busses). Inferential reasoning was obviously not his strong suit, since even the day after, approaching Combapata we could see the very fresh remains of barely dismantled roadblocks, and indeed at the bridge before Combapata, the roadblocks that the police had barely removed the day before were once again up and running.



There was a lane that our bus could have gone through to cross the bridge, but like many other busses, we chose to wait by the side of the road because there were reports of a campesino gathering in the heart of Combapata. So, that was the first explanation of the delay. We didn´t want to drive through an ongoing protest. Fair enough, time to wait. After about 3 hours, being the impatient and pro-active American, I asked if there were any status updates. This time the bus driver responded that police had gone up the road, and he was waiting for them to come back to give another escort to all the busses that had been waiting. Locals however, had a much different take on things: They mentioned (directly to the bus driver) that there was no way the police were coming back that way--because the day before, the police escort was so abused by the mob, their cars were massively dented by thrown rocks, and even some police officers had been tagged in the head with rocks. So if we were truly waiting for the police, they weren´t comin.



Ok, so if we weren´t gonna go through the uprising, and the police weren´t coming, what were we waiting for? Apparently, we were waiting for the protest to escalate and come down to the bridge, because that´s exactly what happened. A tidal wave of protesters came down from town and to the bridge, and began to re-block the one remaining lane across the bridge. Forget your campus sit-in, this was some serious uprising activism. In minutes, they had covered the entire bridge with a mass of rocks 2 feet deep. That´s right, just with simple stones their blockade was almost a yard high.



This was when it became evident to all but the most retarded of observers (aka our bus driver) that there was no way in hell we would be passing through that road. Many busses immediately turned around, but not ours. Apparently we had entered the a la carte stage of bus service: escaping imminent danger was not included in our original fee. Our two clowns seemed perfectly content to just wait there by the bridge, almost inviting the protesters to start throwing rocks at other, shinier things, like parked TourPeru busses.



Earlier, several of the locals had specifically mentioned several not-so-bad alternative routes (remember, the ones that the ticket counter had already mentioned?), and in fact, we could see traffic moving on another road just up the hill. They confirmed that these roads were a) nicely paved, b) easy enough for large busses to pass through, and c) being used as we spoke by all the tour companies from that morning. The alternative was obvious, we needed to turn around and start going the other way. Even so, the bus driver and the collector wouldn´t budge. There was even a Peruvian on our bus who said he knew the way exactly, and could explain it well. The bus driver drooled a couple statements about not knowing the road, but the collector chalked up their delay now to needing confirmation from the boss. Aha, now it was becoming obvious that we were all being puppeted from afar. In either case, neither of the two jokers seemed capable of independent thought, so it was time to start pressuring them and the boss (via cell phone).



At this point I had entered a lucid state of Che Guevarra-like-activism, on behalf of the other passengers (gringos and Peruvians). Matt observed that my Spanish improved exponentially as my anger increased at the scum of the earth owner. At this point, I´ll break up the narrative to define a couple of the terms I used or encountered in my first discussions with the owner (before he hung up on me):

¨Secuestro¨: Kidnapping. In other words, if we weren´t going to advance, and we weren´t going to head back, we were effectively being held hostage on the bus on the side of the road.

¨Sin Reembolso¨: No Refunds. As in, the only way the owner would allow us to return to Cuzco would be if all of us gave up our right to a refund.

So, all the passengers were ready to return to Cuzco since it was obvious we weren´t going anywhere that night if the driver didn´t want to try the alternate route. But still, the driver was ready to wait until midnight, when he thought they could clear the bridge (his spatial reasoning skills were also subpar--no way would that bridge be cleared) and the busses could pass through. Never mind that even if they did, they´d still be heading to the even-worse hotspot of Sicuani.

Again, the drivers didn´t do a single thing until the bus driver authorized them. So there we were, stranded. This is when a mysterious woman, who I will call the Woman in White (W.I.W.) showed up. Somehow, she had the owner on speed dial, and when confronted about how she was making these calls to the owner, she simply stated she was another passenger who also wanted to get to Puno. When pressed, she said she was friends with the owner. It was quickly evident, though, that she pulled more weight than even the fare collector and driver--they were listening to her. In her role as ¨fellow passenger,¨ facing a junta of angry passenger representatives (me for the gringos, a Peruvian, a Colombian, and a rather expressive Brazilian), she miraculously persuaded the owner to order the drivers to take the alternate route...for another 20 soles above the already inflated price. By this time it was dark. I had already mentioned the alternate route to the owner over the phone before, to which his first reply was to demand another 30.

Ok, long story short, the bus wouldn´t move unless every passenger paid more, and the passengers weren´t about to pay more without any guarantee of arriving where we paid to go. So we demanded to pay 10 first, and 10 on arrival. Our ¨fellow passenger¨was opposed to this very reasonable consumer demand, which is when I outed her as a sneaky, lying secret agent who had been working in cahoots with the owner all along. This was also when I realized despite my most eloquent and impassioned efforts, that this was the set up all along--that the entire afternoon was spent setting us up to be cold, impatient, and ready to pay more for where we needed to go.

¨Extorcion¨: Extortion, as in getting a bus full of passengers to agree to pay to anything, if it meant not staying on the side of the road in the mountains with angry campesinos nearby.

¨Mentirosa¨: Liar, as in the W.I.W. who had pretended to be one of us and then turned out to be quite the double agent. I loathe her with every ounce of my being, and hope she comes down with Rickets.

Now the W.I.W. (who I will now refer to as the M.I.W.--Mentirosa in White) had collected a fair amount of the first 10 soles to get the bus moving, but several indignant souls refused to pay more, including some Peruvians and the Colombian. You would think that with a majority of the cash in hand, the bus might have just gotten moving, but no. The owner would not authorize movement for a penny less than what he had extorted, out of every one of us. So the bus remained still, with the drivers claiming ignorance and the M.I.W. pathetically pleading for the refusers to ¨be decent¨and pay up. Finally, the Brazilian out of frustration paid for the remaining hold-outs, and after 8 or 10 hours of waiting, the bus started moving again.

The driver didn´t know the road, so we took quite a bit of time to make our way back toward the first town--an all night ride. At dawn, the rabble-rousing started again. M.I.W. started trying to collect the remaining 10 from everyone, but many of us had of course only agreed to the first 10 just to get the bus moving again. At collection point 2 at least we had options to get off the bus or something.

This is where the Police got involved. When the group refused to pay (again), M.I.W. ordered the bus to stop, and we started all over again. Only this time, the fiery Brazilian left the bus and brought a policeman on board so that we could explain our predicament and the extortion that had happened the night before. They of course pretended to be on our side and said that the bus would move ahead and that we´d reach our destinations without paying a penny more, but as soon as we moved past them, anything they said was disregarded. In fact, M.I.W. was still trying to collect from the hold-outs across from the police outpost.

Finally, the older group of tourists up front paid up for the hold-outs again just to make it to Puno in time for their tour. With all the proper money in hand, the bus got moving again. Until we stopped outside of Puno to pick up a mysterious passenger.

It was the owner! He got on board the bus to personally harass all the hold-outs, even though they had already been paid for! This guy was pure scum. He started threatening the Colombian hold-out (Andres, a young guy who I really admired for his eloquence and backbone), and Andres stood his ground, gladly wanting the Police to get involved once we got to Puno. At this time, I took my opportunity to tell this guy off too:

¨Sin Verguenza¨ : Shameless. A less vulgar version of what I really wanted to call the guy.

¨Cobarde¨: Coward. As in, I told the owner that I was glad he came on board, becauseI was about to think he was a coward for screwing us from afar. At least now he had the gall to get on board the bus to screw us.

There were several other things I told him, but like Will Ferrell at the end of Old School, I kind of blacked out. Maybe Matt remembers.

Ok, so we reach Puno after 22 hours. Pity, we were just short of breaking the 24 hour mark for the bus ride. Oh wait, how about we reach the remaining 2 hours with a group visit to the Puno police station? Yes, at the very end of the trip, after so much abuse from the owner, as Andres the Colombian was trying to get his bags to be free of these leeches, the owner actually punched him in the face! (they had tried to prevent all of us from getting our bags to prolong our hassle, but one of the Brits screamed at the baggage guys to back off--it was awesome).

So, in solidarity with Andres, and to lodge a protest with the Tourism agency, about 16 gringos walked across town to the Puno tourist police to support Andres and tell off the owner. They collected written statements, took our fingerprints, assured us justice would be done, and didn´t do a damn thing.

The dawn of the bus ride, by the way, was gorgeous.

Onwards to Lake Titicaca and into Bolivia

Hi folks--

Sorry we haven´t been as dilligent about keeping up with the blog as we´d like. Blame it on having too much to do (or, in reality, because we´re lazy).

After we arrived back in Cuzco, we spent one more full day relaxing and enjoying the city before we decided to head south to Puno, on the shore of Lake Titicaca. There had been a farmers´ strike going on the last few days in the area between the two cities where the highway was blocked by campesinos in several villages enroute. We were told conflicting info on this, but heard that it was finished by the morning we were ready to leave. Well, when we arrived at the bus station we found out that the protests and road blocks were indeed still going on. This was a serious crimp in our plans, since it is very difficult to circumvent these problems on the few roads up in the highlands. We were trying to figure out what to do when a couple friends we had made walked by with their bags and told us that they had just gotten tickets on a bus to Puno that was going to go around the blockade via backroads. There were only a couple seats left, so we hurriedly purchased seats and went out to wait for the bus.

I´m going to leave the description of the bus ride to Puno in John´s hands, but suffice it to say, it was eventful. It messed up our timing to the point that by the time we got to Puno, we were ready to head onwards toward Bolivia rather than stay any longer in Peru. So after a great meal of salteñas and coffee for lunch, we boarded a local bus for the border village of Yunguyo. I´ve crossed here before and it was really simple, and luckily it was this time as well. The only difference is that Bolivia has recently instituted a massive visa fee for citizens of the US ($135 - a tit for tat measure to counter the high visa fees for Bolivians entering the US). That was a painful punch to the pocket, but at least the visa is valid for 5 years. Up till this point we weren´t actually sure if we were going to be heading into Bolivia, since the political situation here was quite unstable last month. After talking with travelers returning from the country and keeping up with local news, we decided that it had stabilized enough to head on in. I´m really glad we did, because it´s great to be back in this country.

Anyway, from the border town, we headed further on along the shore of Lake Titicaca to the little resort town of Copacabana, where we spent the night. Lake Titicaca is a pretty amazing place, with crystal blue skies and water, plus quaint villages scattered along its extensive shoreline. We went for an evening walk along the water and watched a beautiful sunset over the hills and waves.

The next morning we got up and hopped on a bus to La Paz. This route is interesting because to reach La Paz from Copacabana it is necessary to cross a straight by boat. All the passengers disembark and hop in a speedboat to cross the water, while the bus trundles onto a wooden ferry that can barely hold its weight. Afterwards, everyone loads back on and the trip continues. As we rose further up onto the Altiplano from the lake, the Cordillera Real, the mountains north of La Paz, rose massively in the distance. It was s a very stark and beautiful panorama.

Eventually the road leaves the cold, windswept plains and enters a chaotic, dirty, sprawling slum settlement called El Alto. When you hit this area, you know that you´ve reached the outskirts of La Paz. La Paz is situated in a bowl-like canyon with El Alto perched up on the rim. Once you make it through the chaos of El Alto, the views of La Paz below you will literally take your breath away. It´s a pretty amazing site.

In La Paz, we are staying with John´s mother´s friend, Jackie. She and her family are great! We´ll write more about our time here in a couple days.

-Matt!

Matt!´s trip from Machu Picchu back to Cuzco

Hi folks!

Ssh! It´s a secret! There´s a way into the Machu Picchu area that doesn´t require paying for a ridiculously high train ticket or hiking for four days on the Inca Trail (which also costs around $300). Through talking with budget travelers and doing a little research, we were able to discover that you can walk the tracks that come into the Machu Picchu area from the opposite direction that most travelers come. Since we rode the train in, I tried the ¨secret¨ way out. I got up at 5am and headed down the tracks (where I had had a couple days of great birding earlier). The 11 kilometer hike was once again great for birding, with several new species and some oldies but goodies, such as Andean Cock-of-the-Rock and Highland Motmot. There is actually a train that goes this route for $8, so it would be possible to go out this way without hiking and still save quite a bit of money (the round trip train ticket from Cuzco to Machu Picchu is almost $100). Anyway, once I arrived at the hyrdoelectric project that is in place downstream from Machu Picchu, I was quickly able to catch a ride in a collectivo taxi to the nearest town, Santa Teresa. Here, I had time for a morning coffee while looking out over the valley before I caught my next collectivo to the next town, Santa Maria. The ride between these two villages was spectacular. The road hugged a cliff over the roaring Rio Urubamba as it crashed its way down into the Amazonian lowlands. Santa Maria is a crossroads village on the road from Quillabamba (though still a dirt road town), so I was able to catch a direct bus from here back to Cuzco. This particular road rises out of the high jungle (1000m) and over a 4300 meter (14,200ft) pass before dropping back down into the Sacred Valley and then back up to Cuzco. There was a lot of elevation gain and loss in my day! The habitat went from cloud forest to dry intermontane valley to subtropical forest to high tropical forest back to cloud forest to high altitude puna to sub-glacial back to dry intermontane valley and finally to subpuno grassland and scrub around Cuzco. The whole journey took me about 9 hours and was a lot of fun. I arrived back in Cuzco and found John at the hostel. He was feeling better after his round of being sick, but wasn´t quite up to doing something rough and curvy yet. He had arrived a couple hours earlier by train. Now that he´s feeling better, I´m looking forward to doing more of these kind of adventures with him!

-matt!

Easy street(s): JB returns from pallor & Machu Picchu

Given the semi-hibernative state I´d been in for the past several days, I wasn´t up to Matt´s grand plan to return to Cuzco from Machu Picchu. Truth be told, I was starting to feel better the night before, but maybe I just wanted to avoid the 5 AM start. Anyway, to play it safe, I went with the zero-exertion option: passage on the train back to Ollantaytambo, and then back to Cuzco via Chinchero, on a bus or taxi. This ended up being a nice loop to complete a pretty thorough exploration of the Sacred Valley, a veritable bonanza of high-mountain Latin American scenery. Glaciated peaks tip out above very Andean (read, terraced) altiplano ridges and spiky-shaped desert peaks, which in turn roll down into a patchwork green and brown river valley--an area which easily stands on equal footing with Machu Picchu as one of my favorite memories of Peru.



Our first encounter with the Sacred Valley was upon leaving Cuzco toward the ruins of Inca Pisac, Ollantaytambo, and Moray, the sites of the various ruins featured in the photo collage. I was stunned by how lush and fertile this valley was, and it was evident to us that this area of Peru is doing much better economically than other rural agrarian areas in the country. Villages in the Sacred Valley had well maintained plazas, well-kept shops and restaurants, and offered countless outdoor oriented tourist activities.



As a cyclist, the area is a paradise-in-waiting. Amateur (and touristy) mountain bike tours have sprung up in every town, utilizing old Inca trails, livestock trails, or footpaths & primitive roads that simply link two villages together. It was impossible to not notice trails in every direction on every hillside and not want to be riding down them. The only question is, who knows where they go and how exciting they are? Similarly, while transiting the various roads in the area, it was also impossible to not consider the potential in the even less developed road bike scene. Roadies would appreciate much more than the perfect climate and masochistic altitude: the routes are also pretty much perfect for serious riders. The Pros: Respectable pavement, drivers who give wide berth to cargo bicycles on the road (and who don´t gab away on cell phones), truly epic euro-style switchback climbs into huge mountain vistas, extensive drawn out descents into bucolic valleys, all at 9k-11k altitude, and all well within riding distance of Cuzco within a day. As with the mountain biking, the only thing missing for the serious cyclist is knowing who to trust to show you around--in other words, guide & tour services for the serious cyclist, versus just-some-guy who will rent you a bike.



So, with all this on my mind, the afternoon I returned to Cuzco, I went to the bike shop of a guy I had stalked and chased down a few days earlier (yes, it was quite reminiscent of my mountain bike team recruiting days)--a former Peruvian national champion bike racer named Russo Covarrubias . He laid out some options, mostly back in the Sacred Valley, but described one ride from Cuzco that was both cheaper and would allow me to actually get some cycling exercise uphill as well as great singletrack riding down. We made arrangements for the next day. Sweet.



Matt, incredibly, was already at the hostel when I got back around 4 PM. Which made for quite a day for him, and a rather mellow, but productive one for me.

Machu Picchu - finally!

Hi folks!

After a couple days of John being under the weather, we finally made it up to Machu Picchu. The setting of this amazing place is what really turns a good archeological site into an astounding one. Located up on a ridge 1500 feet above the River Urubamba and surrounded by towering mountains, you really couldn´t get a more grand setting. We spent the day seeking out the quiet corners of the ruins, where we could escape the crowds and enjoy the views. It was an easy, slow-paced, wonderful way experience Machu Picchu. Not to mention awesome weather.

Though John was out of the count the last couple of days, I´ve used that time to my advantage and gotten to do some great birding and hiking around the Machu Picchu area. Yesterday I went up Montaña Putukusi, a peak across the river from Machu Picchu. It was a seriously vertical hike, and included a long section of ladders attached to the cliffs. The views were great. The birding the last few days has probably added up to over 100 species -- lots of tanagers, hummingbirds, and other good stuff. Even a few new ones!

We´re heading back to Cuzco tomorrow (finally). We´re going to try different routes, since John´s stomach still isn´t quite up to the more arduous route we were both interested in. While he heads back by train to Ollantaytambo, then by bus to Cuzco, I´ll walk downriver along the train tracks to the hydroelectric plant a couple hours down stream, then use various collectivo taxis and buses to get around the Machu Picchu area. The route goes over Abra de Malaga pass (4800m), which should gives some stunning views of subglacial habitat and polylepis forest. Luckily, I think we will end up going over a few more passes like this later in the the trip, so John will get to experience it, as well. For John, going over a high, extremely curvy road doesn´t sound too good.....

Once again, I´ll add captions to these photos when we get to a place that doesn´t have weird computers. =)

-Matt!

Photo collage of the trip so far

Hi everyone--

Here´s the kick-off post for our blog. Since we got behind on the actual postings, I´ve simply posted some random photos from our (mis)adventures so far. If you have questions about the photos, let us know. I´ll get captions on them when I´m able (this computer is making life difficult at the moment). Enjoy!

-Matt!