Kepfram & Ellie's Travel Journal

What I learned in Bolivia:

• Dogs sometimes have homes! this is only in the cities or larger towns, and we still seem plenty of street dogs, but even those who have homes don't have groomers....
• Dirt roads don't have to be full of pot holes - they're not bad in places where there is not much rain (although we did have to ford some streams in our bus) Costa Rica still maintains it's title of worst roads in Latin America...
• No Bolivian buses have bathrooms - the buses will generally stop once or twice along a long route - but one of our buses actually stopped at a store/restaurant (during a 6 hour trip) at a spot with NO BATHROOMS - the passengers had to go looking for bushes (this was unfortunately the day I sprained my ankle, so Kepfram had to carry me into the bushes & then back out again... what an experience!)
• I learned to dehydrate myself before getting on a bus.
• On long bus rides the extra driver sleeps in a compartment UNDER the bus, next to the luggage compartments.
• Bus drivers here double as mechanics - in fact the only travel issues we've had in our journey so far has been in Bolivia - on 2 out of the 3 bus trips we took.
• TP does not come standard in hotel rooms - even those with private baths, neither do towels.
• Especially useful to know for the last morning in a hotel room - you can use the bed sheets to dry off and thus avoid having to pack wet towels for your journey.
• Bolivia is full of arid, mineral rich highlands and tropical lowlands - but has no sea access - and therefore a LONG history of political/economic problems.
• Bolivia is the poorest country we'll visit (poverty rate about 65% of the population with extreme poverty for over 35%), and as a result the least expensive - meals and hotel rooms for $2 per person...
• It's actually cheaper to eat out here than to shop for food in the supermarket!
• Common houses here are still mostly made of adobe and sometimes stone, with better constructions made of cement (there is still very little wood, at least in the highlands).
• In the cities there are baños publicos all over the place (of course you have to pay to use them) - you still see men peeing in the streets - these bathrooms are so common in fact that I wonder if poor people's lodging could be lacking certain facilities...
• Bolivian people are much more chatty than Peruvians or Ecuadorans, therefore Kefram and I have had plenty of opportunity to practice our Castillano (don't call it "español" - the Spanish are the conquerors, the theives, the exploiters...)
• We observed many Bolivians using the "vos" form when speaking to each other.
• There are HUGE herds of llamas and many wild vicuñas in the highlands of Bolivia.
• All the salt in Bolivia's salt flats is harvested by one community, and just used for local consumption.
• There is no science to putting iodine into salt in Bolivia, we took a tour of a salt "factory" where they told us that they use 1kg of iodine to 600,000kg of salt - when asked how they measure it out, the guide sort of shrugged and told us they put in the amount that feels right...

Ellie

addendum:

• Since we left Bolivia on April 30th, we weren´t there to witness the reaction to President Evo Morales´s nationalization of the Bolivian gas industry on May 1st (International Labor Day). If you want to read more about this story, try Wikipedia.

Llegamos en Uyuni por la noche el martes y aunque no pude caminar bien (con el tobillo torcido) estábamos emocionante para ver el Salar de Uyuni y comenzar nuestro tur el día siguiente. Desgraciadamente la compañía que habíamos elegido (por su buena reputación) decidió decirnos por la mañana el miércoles (aunque habíamos hablado con ellos el martes) que el plan de nuestro tur había cambiado y por las condiciones en el Salar no se pudo cruzar completemente y por eso que teníamos que regresar para pasar nuestra primera noche del tur en el feo pueblo de Uyuni. Estaba desilusionada con la idea de no pasar una noche al lado del Salar y estaba pensando que esa no era la verdadera razón para regresar, porque habíamos visto que nuestros nombres eran los únicos en su lista por el día - y habíamos pensado que para hacer el tur necesitaban por lo menos 4 o 5 personas. Pero, cuando les pregunté porque no esperamos un día mas para mas personas nos dijeron otra vez que era por las condiciones y era peligroso pasar en ése tiempo.
Entonces fuimos al Salar por un tur de día (con una familia que iba a pasar la noche en uno de los hoteles que es hecho de sal), pero el chofer y los otros turistas confirmaron que el tiempo era bueno y se pudo pasar el Salar si quiera.
Cuando regresamos por la noche estaba más desilusionada que antes. La realidad del pueblo es una pequeña lugar, sucio, con mucho polvo, y con muchos turistas pero casi nada de hacer. Estaba enojada y decidí hablar con la compañía.
Tengo que dar gracias a mi profesora de castellano, Monica Donikian (de E.A.S.Y Idiomas en San Pedro, Costa Rica), que me ha dado confianza en usar estructuras complicadas y expresar mis pensamientos claramente.
Les dije que si hubiéramos sabido que el plan del tur había cambiado el día anterior (cuando teníamos el derecho de cancelar), no habríamos ido con ellos. También les pregunté porque nos mintieron sobre las condiciones. Ellos pudieron ver que estaba enojada y también que entendí bien lo que habían tratado de hacer. Por eso al final nos dieron el tur completo el día siguiente con otro grupo y adición de cubrir nuestra noche en hotel y la cena como habían dicho antes.

Potosí - the highest city in the world at 4,090 meters (13,400 feet). Although we´re mostly accustomed to these heights - having been above 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) since we arrived in Cuzco on April 10th (with the brief exception of our 2 days at Machu Picchu) - it´s still a little hard to climb the hills.
Potosí is a colonial city: Spanish architecture, cobbled or tiled streets, clay roofs, stone and adobe walls - no heat in most buildings, but really thick walls kept our hostel room warm all night.
This town was built as a base for silver mining & the minting of coins (at one time Spain´s coins were minted in Potosí, although ironically now Bolivia´s coins are minted in Spain....). Due to the labor costs and terrible conditions of mining in the area, Bolivia imported African slaves in the 1500 & 1600s. Interestingly the people around here seem to never have seen a real live black person, and there is a LOT of staring and the kids openly gaping & pointing when Kepfram walks by. Several Bolivians have even asked Kepfram if he´s visiting from Africa (I wonder what happened to the former slave population if the locals can´t imagine anywhere else a black person could be from!!).
We didn´t visit the mines (although most tourists seem to, the ones we talked to told us they were hot and miserable and that 2 hours seemed forever). We did take a day trip to the nearby towns of Tarapaya and Miraflores - both with hot springs!! We stopped 1st at the volcanic lake "Ojo del Inca" near Tarapaya - it´s on top of a hill in almost the middle of nowhere - gorgeous, but not hot enough for Kepfram at only 25 C (77 F). So we moved on to Miraflores, a town that seems to exist for it´s 10 or so pools that have captured the hot volcanic water. Some of the pools are full of screaming children in buildings with little ventilation and the smell of urine, however the one we eventually found had a lots of air circulating under the roof and some really nice hot 30 C (86 F) water.
We met a family here and I played PT to the father/grandfather who´d broken his wrist in a fall only 2 weeks before (apparently they´d taken off the cast after a few days because it was too tight, and the doctor had sent him to PT instead!). He wasn´t tolerating the exercises the PT had him doing, so he´s skipped his appointment and gone to soak in the pools instead..... Later we talked for a while about many things including Bolivian history and politics (Kepfram´s Spanish is getting really good - he´s generally able to understand what people tell him and he can pretty much get his point across when he wants to say something).
The countryside around Potosí reminds me of the south west US - red earth, green shrub, rocky hills stripped with sediment - the exception: large, freely roaming pigs eating trash out of the river that flowed through the town of Miraflores.....
On our way back to Potosí a group of young Bolivians chatted up Kepfram, apparently they wanted their picture taken with the exotic gringo.....
On our last morning in town, while walking to the bus station will all our stuff on our backs I tripped and fell and sprained my ankle..... We´re on our way to what´s supposed to be one of the highlights of South America (the Salar de Uyuni) - I hope I can walk........

Ellie

Disculpe, no hemos escrito en unas semanas, pero estamos en Bolivia ahora (conocemos Copacabana y la Isla del Sol, La Paz, y vamos a Potosí ésta noche). Bolivia es el país mas pobre que conocemos, pero es bonito y la gente muy sociable. Por la pobreza tengo un poquito de miedo de tomar los buses porque no hay ningunos con baños y ésta noche nuestro viaje es 12 horas. Vamos a conocer el Salar de Uyuni en unos días, y después vamos a Chile.
Tratamos de escribir mas sobre nuestra ultima semana en Perú y los lugares de Bolivia cuando podamos.
Abrazos a todos,
Ellie

I was happy to leave Copacabana, but first a quick lesson in vertical integration. If you own a travel agency, bus company, & a hotel you can provide timely, convenient, services, often at a preferable price. This also means that you don't have to stop at the bus station, you can talk up the benefits of your hotel & inform people that the bus's last & only stop will be right in front of the hotel you happen to own even if this pisses off all your passengers who happened to have somewhere else to go. Anyway....

La Paz, capital of Bolivia, population around 1 million, elevation 3,600 meters above sea level, "the world's highest capital." Weather: sunny & cool with a slight chance of kidnapping (it would be funny if it weren't so true).
There have been some unfortunate incidents in La Paz lately, but thankfully, we got through without any problems. La Paz looked HUGE as we came into it, as we descended into the valley we just saw buildings everywhere & at night throughout the hills the street lights seemed to go on forever into the distance...
So our priorities in La Paz were a little different: I wanted to stock up on supplies & Ellie wanted to enjoy the city. We really should talk more.
In the end we bought some cold weather clothes. We both got snow pants, an alpaca hat, some gloves, & a fleece vest for Ellie, while I got a baby alpaca scarf & ear band & some alpaca socks. Alpacas are like wooly deer, we still can't tell the difference between them & llamas, although both are tasty (llamas taste beefy, alpacas taste like mutton, yum!), alpacas make better wool. We have figured out that the difference between vicuñas & guanacos though. Guanacos have grey faces & more wool, also the wool of both animals is finer & more expensive than alpaca or llama wool. I'm still hoping to snag some garments made of guanaco or vicuña wool though, but I doubt it's gonna happen considering their small numbers & the fact that vicuñas are protected/endangered.
Other noteworthy things about La Paz:

Good Lebanese food. Who knew? We liked our lunch so much that we went back & bought out all of their meat empanadas (& 1/2 of their veggie too!) for our bus ride out of town.

The derbys & bonnets the indigineous women here remind me of Wimpy from the Popeye cartoons.
One of the things we wanted to do but didn't was visit El Museo del Coca so we could answer some of our burning questions about coca. We know coca is a mild stimulant like coffee & makes a nice cup of tea that also helps with sarroche/altitude sickness, but now we never know what else it's used for...

Completely unrelated to anything else, but we saw 2 or 3 parades during our time in La Paz & we never figured out what they were about.
Kepfram

Copa - Copacabana!
Sadly, I didn't like Copa so much (this should not be confused with Copa Airlines, which is first in my heart among airlines). Copacabana, Bolivia felt too much like a tourist trap, literally. There is a 1 Boliviano (about US$0.125) fee to enter the town, there are no ATMs either, a first for our trip & quite odd for a tourist destination, but there are money changers on every block (with very favorable rates, ), & getting change was like pulling teeth! A common exchange went like this: Vendor charges me 7Bs, I pay with 10Bs, he doesn't have change. "Why don't you have change?" "Because the money changer across the street gave me 100s & 20s!" Eventually after looking at me like he wants me to say "keep the difference" for a minute the vendor goes across the street to the money changer & gets change!
Anyway, we did enjoy the movie room in the Mankha Uta restaurant both nights we were in town.
The other thing we liked was our 10K hike along the ridge of Isla del Sol on Lake Titicaca, it was really pretty.

& even though I didn't like the hidden costs in Copacabana it wasn't all bad, $2 hotel rooms & a friendly staff at the movie restaurant made up for a lot, besides it's hard to get bent out of shape even on principle when you're only getting shorted about $2 overall.

Kepfram

What I learned in Peru:

• Incan stone cutters are incredible!
• Carry toilet paper with you at all times.
• There´s a difference between 1st class buses and the daily variety - in addition to the SERVANTS who bring you food & blankets, the most important difference is that 1st class buses have bathrooms! also the 1st class buses don´t stop and pick up passengers along the way, so the isles aren´t crowded with people and packages.
• Bus seems to be the major mode of transport for most of the population, as a result we always see children on the buses. The children are ALL really well behaved!
• There is actually a small black population in Peru, it´s on the coast south east of Lima (everyone who meets Kepfram seems to assume he´s from there).
• People sweeping the streets wear masks (due to the dry & dusty air?)
• We´ve seen several adobe fences that look like corrals but without any doors - seems they are built to keep animals out, not in...
• Sheep and cows are not the only animals that are herded - we´ve also seen people walking down the road herding llamas and even pigs.
• Terracing of fields seems to be an Incan inspired tradition
• Women still use cloths to bundle their children on their backs, I´ve seen several bundles that are completely covered but by the concealed shapes seem to be sleeping children.....
• The porters from the Inca Trail walk around with INCREDIBLY sized bundles on their backs, and hike most of the trail wearing sandals made from tire tread!
• Little boys and grown men alike pee in public.
• Kids on the street often ask for gifts of pens or pencils, not just small change.
• Sales technique here is VERY aggressive - we actually witnessed a shop keeper THROWING merchandise at a customer who was leaving her shop after buying something - she then proceeded to run after him actually expecting him to buy the sweater she´d hurled at him..... Also, whenever we arrive in a new town there is a sea of people there to meet the bus trying with offers of accommodations. When we´ve already had reservations it doesn´t seem to make a difference "What´s the name of your hotel?" (I just get rude and tell them again that I´m not interested, but others we know have been tricked into getting rides to hotels with similar names to the one they´d planned to stay in....)
• April 9th was election day, out of 20 some presidential candidates the 3 front runners include a conservative woman, an ex-president with a record of deep damage to Peru´s economy (with a dramatic increase in the poverty rate during his presidency), and the leading candidate a populist former military man with some questionable platforms and a fascist leaning family.... ahh what choices..... (There will be a run off in a month or 2 to decide between the top 2).
• You can run for congressional office on a platform such as "2 time world Karate Champion will put all his energy to work for you" (we seem to have misplaced the photo proof of this somewhere in the sea of pictures we´ve uploaded to flickr, so that is paraphrased, but really not too far off....)
• If you want your house or wall painted, get someone to put up a political advertisement on your property (this is really a guess, but considering the number of clearly personal property we saw with a huge variety of slogans and names painted, it seems like the most likely explanation).
• Illiteracy here is high - depending on who you read it´s 10% or it´s 40% - I´m inclined to believe some the higher statistics, and imagine that there are many semi-literates as well. As a result the election ballots consist of a choice of symbols representing each candidates party instead of the candidates names names.
• Poverty here is documented at over 50% - you can see it most clearly in the construction of the settlements that fall on the outskirts of all the towns and cities. In the mountains the houses are mostly adobe, but on the sandy coast they are often made of nothing more than reeds woven together to make walls....

Ellie

We took a 1st class train from Cusco to Puno on Lake Titicaca - as Kepfram mentioned it was a really nice train. Unfortunately I couldn't really appreciate it. I thought I was getting sick from the altitude. Around the time they served the included (and quite elaborate) lunch I was starting to feel ill (at least Kepfram was there to eat my lunch for me :)

I felt really bad by the time the train stopped briefly at a station on a mountain pass set at 4090m/13,400ft (the highest point on the journey) - I was really nauseous, and later started to feel dizzy and had distorted senses (I didn't realize until we checked into our hotel later that the disorientation was actually fever and the nausea was about to pass and be replaced by a night of running to the bathroom....). Luckily our hotel had an in room bathroom with hot water and towels and the bed was probably the most comfortable I´d slept in in a LONG time (it even had soft pillows, something I've been missing since we left home). So I spent about 24 hours (that evening and most of the next day) in bed, and Kepfram spent 7+ hours in an internet cafe uploading hundreds of photos and catching up on tech news.

I took some antibiotics and by the next day I was mostly recovered so we headed off on our planned expedition of the lake, a tour of the islands on the Peru side: the floating islands of the Uros people (about 35 man made islands - make from cut reads - each housing about 5-15 families), as well as 2 small natural islands (las Islas Amantaní y Taquile) each with a population of about 4000.

In the morning our boat stopped at a couple of las Islas Flotantes (very funny feeling walking on them) - the people fish, grow a small amount of produce on decayed sections of their islands, and make crafts (embroidery and reed sculptures mostly) to sell to tourists.


Then we moved on to Isla Amantaní where we stayed with a local family in a house with no running water or electricity, ate local food (mmMMm Quinoa soup...), watched part of an annual festival for the anniversary of the island (which we happened to hit totally by accident), hiked around (the hiking was a little breathless at over 4000m/13,150ft), and then got dressed up in traditional clothing and went to a traditional dance party they have for the tourists. It was nice, but the cloths were hot, the dancing not that interesting, and the music a little monotonous after a few hours, so feeling a little bad for cutting their fun short, we had the girls from the family who'd accompanied us take us back home.


The next morning we took our boat to Isla Taquile where we hiked around some more, saw a little bit different traditional dress, I took a bunch of surreptitious pictures of children playing, we had lunch, and then headed back to the mainland.
For our tour we had a great guide, on the boat ride back we even had some fun tutoring him on his English. All in all, the tour was one of the highlights of Peru for us.

Ellie

There are 4 classes of trains in Peru & 2 sets of prices (national & foreigner), but that's not important. We took the 2nd cheapest train to & from Machu Picchu/ Aguas Calientes. It was a nice ride but seemed overvalued to me (Ellie disagrees on this point). The cars had windows in the ceilings, but there wasn't much to see & that was the big difference between that train & the cheaper one. We took the 2nd most expensive train from Cusco to Puno/Lake Titicaca & while it was pricey, it was really nice. Think of any movie about the old Orient Express & you'll get the idea: dark wood panelling, bi-lingual stewards in starched uniforms, an observation caboose with a bar, & the tastiest chicken salad sandwhich I've ever had (at $7 it seemed high after paying about $6.60 for 1/2 a roasted chicken, a pound of fries, an unlimited salad bar & a liter of lemonade for our dinner in Cusco, but it was a good sandwhich).

Kepfram

Machu Picchu!!
I had really wanted to hike the Inca Trail - I´m not sure Kepfram was so keen on it, but it was not to be anyway.... We scheduled our trip loosely from the start with only beginning an ending dates and a list of countries to explore (we did this to avoid feeling rushed along the way, and so far it has served us well). So we didn´t know exactly when we´d get to Cusco and therefore didn´t make advance reservations for the Trail. As it turns out we arrived right at the beginning of Holy Week - a week of vacation for many Peruvians in addition to a spike in foreign tourists although it´s technically still the "low season" - so there was no chance of getting a space. Even the 2 day 1 night "mini Trail" was out because of a recent landslide cutting of the typical entrance trough Intipunka, the Sun Gate (don´t worry this should be fixed soon).
So, after spending a few days adjusting to the altitude in Cuzco we took the train up to Aguas Calientes (I decided to take the $ I´d budgeted for the Inca Trail and splurge on luxury PeruRail trips both to Aguas Calientes and later to Puno) and we took the (also expensive) tourist bus from there up to the ruins. We decided on spending 2 days exploring the park (it is HUGE), and really I would have liked more (but again, the ticket price to get in is quite high at about $40 pp/day).....
The first day we only had a few hours in the afternoon to explore, so we hiked out to Puente del Inca - an ancient drawbridge now replaced by wooden planks, but built along a COMPLETELY sheer cliff face (I have no idea how they did these things), and then we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the extensive ruins and marveling at the extent of it all.
The next day we got up before 5AM to catch the first bus up in order to at Machu Picchu to see the sunrise. The bus was delayed by a procession of catholics carrying a giant cross up the road to a nearby church (it was Good Friday), it had started getting light by the time we arrived at the top of the hill, but we were still first in when the park opened at 6AM. We hiked up to our planned look out point, but the ruins below were completely socked in with fog, and the view towards the mountains to the east was not much better. After a little while waiting we realized that the clouds were not about to clear for us to see the sun, we decided to move on and hike up the adjacent sacred peak of Huayna Picchu. The trail to this attraction opens at 7AM, and closes by 1PM or after 400 hikers have entered, whichever comes first (it´s usually closed before noon). This is a HARD 45 minute to 1 hour hike up an impossibly steep mountain (at least we weren´t at much of an altitude here), with steps carved into the stone trail by the builders of the temples at the top. We got to the peak before 8AM - but again we were surrounded by clouds.... We were not about to climb all that way and not get a view, so we explored the summit and waited until about 10AM when the clouds finally burned off below and we could look down on the Incan masterpiece.
The runis consist of several temples and other sacred structures and the houses and terraced fields of the workers. The ruins are currently home to large squirrel-rabbit things called vizcachas, a number of birds, and grazing llamas - which are only there to please the shutter happy tourists - apparently llamas are much happier at higher altitudes.... The really impressive buildings are the temples (constructed solely of precisely cut stone like the temples we saw near Cuzco), sacred stones carved to match the profiles of the neighboring sacred mountains, and channels for water into the temples as well as to the terraced fields.
Kepfram was distinctly underwhelmed by the architecture of the residential buildings, but the temples were still quite remarkable (although apparently the top of the mountain where they are built is slowly settling and there has been at least one large earthquake, so some the of the buildings are damaged). But overall the scope of the city is really striking and the views are incredible.
We ended up not taking an organized tour of the ruins (mostly because of timing - it started to rain right at the time we´d been thinking to go look for a guide), but we did hear quite a few explanations by guides of various other tours as we walked around, so we didn´t feel too deprived at the end. However, it anyone wants to hike the Inca Trail with me some time in the future, I´d definitely go back for more!!

Ellie

So our 14 hour "bus cama" sleeper bus was not what we were lead to believe. It was a "semi-cama," (they lied to us). It had comfortable reclining seats, a stewardess who served refreshments, & bad American movies dubbed or with subtitles, but was not a full sleeper, oh well, maybe we'll take one in Chile or Argentina...
Cusco, former capital of the Inca Empire sits 3399 meters (11,152 feet for the metric impaired) above sea level and was the 1st stop on our path to acclimatization (we won't be close to sea level again till May). It's an old city, with lots of colonial style buildings (many built with stone "borrowed" from much older Inca structures), narrow cobblestone streets (some so steep the turned to stone staircases), & pretty plazas & churches.
Neither of us has ever been at this altitude before & are still not used to it. Fortunately my opossum defense spared me the first bit of altitude sickness. Sadly Ellie was short of breath and had a headache for most of our first day (maybe she can learn to develop some other marsupial's defense system?). This is not to say that it's been easy for either of us, both of us were wheezing like asthmatics after climbing 2 flights of stairs, the difference was I'd push myself to the top & stop while my lungs burned.
Anyway, besides the altitude & overly zealous people trying to sell us everything from handicrafts "¡Compré algo! (Buy something!)" to marijuana (shoving crumbled weed in my face to prove it was fresh) we liked Cusco. We hiked to nearby ruins (Saqsaywaman, Puka Pukara, Q'enqo, & Tambomachay) with an aspiring guide in exchange for helping him practice his English, had some tasty meals, & there was a chocolate shop we really wanted to go back to.
We were really impressed by the construction of the Inca sites near Cusco. They were all cut stone, no mortar. I suspect they would still be standing if their stones hadn't been "mined" for some buildings in Cusco.

Also, I overpaid for a shoe shine ($1.66 instead of $0.33), it was the best shoe shine of my life.
We also really also really liked our hostal, they were REALLY great with helping us make travel arrangements & information for things around the city, so if you're ever in Cusco try to get into Hostal Anita - it's the annex of Hostel Amaru (a well reputed and affordable hostal in Cusco) - you'd never find Hostal Anita without help (there's no sign and it looks like nothing from the outside, but it's nice on the inside and cheaper than Amaru...

Kepfram

Nazca (or is it "Nasca" - no one seems to know....), Peru: We flew over the Nazca Lines - carved into the sandy soil of southern Peru´s plateau between 200BC and 600AD. Look closely at the picture and see if you can identify the image of a monkey at the bottom, center (click on the image to enlarge it).
There are many theories about how a people would make symbols so incredible large that they could not be seen from the ground - the theory that makes the most sense to me is that these were lines they walked the outlines of their creature creations in order to pay respect/worship that which they symbolized.
There are also theories about why the civilization disappeared - the answer appears to be drought, but the place has basically always been a desert. There is also an extensive system of aqueducts to capture and direct the large quantity of underground water.
The 25 minute flight was stomach turning, but worth it. We also saw a traditional style refinery where gold was extracted from rock found in local mines, a traditional pottery "factory", as well as local Necropolis with some interesting mummies...(go see our flikr album to get a look, I decided to spare the kiddies and not post those photos here....).

Ellie

Peru, so far so good.
We just arrived in Nazca & I'm anxious to get to Cuzco.
All of Peru's coast seems the same. It's desert. It's hot. The little towns are poor, dusty, & not too remarkable. The bigger towns & cities have bigger buildings, & more ways to occupy your time till you move to your next destination, but we haven't been anywhere yet that we wanted to spend more time than we did yet.
Counting back: Chiclayo, Trujillo, Lima, Pisco, & now Nazca were all very similar for us. We visited museums & ruins in the first 3 & from Pisco we visited the Ballestas Islands, the "poor man's Galapagos" where we saw a lot of animals (sea lions, pelicans, inca terns, sea otters, crabs, humbolt penguins, & others). Pictures will follow later, we're backed up on photos & it's gonna take me a long time to upload everything.
Our bus tomorrow night to Cuzco is a luxury sleeper bus, I'm not looking forward to the 15 hour trip, but I am looking forward to a bus ride with movies & a stewardess...

Later,

Kepfram

Pisco, Peru - basically it´s a pit: dusty, dirty beach town full of mangy and wounded street dogs and a really scary open air market (think: the stories we told about Granada, Nicaragua).
As a result of the market experience Kepfram was nauseated by all "fresh" foods, so we made dinner out of packages and cans (pasta, tuna, peanut butter, evaporated milk, canned aji - hot pepper sauce..... mmmmmMMMMMmmmmmm).
We did stay at a great hostel however: Hostel San Isidro in Pisco was VERY comfortable - we stayed in a nice room with a private bath & TV, and the hostel has a restaurant, guest kitchen, a swimming pool, and they let us wash our OWN laundry for FREE... (laundry has been our most pricey unavoidable expense). Plus we were very pleased with the tourist package offered by the tourist agents who work the hotel.
The reason to go to Pisco, is the nearby Reserva Nacional de Paracas (the 2nd driest desert in the world - which we had the pleasure of viewing during...: a sand storm.... ouch!! ....glad neither of us wear contacts....) and the neighboring Islas Ballestas - a protected sanctuary for sea birds (including Penguins (!!) and in the right season flamingos (unfortunately not now)), sea lions, and guano (the crap generated by a certain type of cormoran which nests here - apparently the best fertelizer in the world - every 5 years or so teams come out to the islands to "harvest" the guano, in the meantime there are 2 people living on one of these islands full time to protect the animals and "the most expensive crap in the world" from poachers...).

Peace,
Ellie

Faces of Death: Ways we could die on this trip...
On one of our last days in Ecuador after almost falling out of the window of a moving bus I realized that there are some risks involved in taking this trip. After that Ellie & I started counting the close calls & possible ways that we could come to bodily harm on our little "aventura."
This is the list so far:

• falling out of the bus window while trying to get a photo
• scorpions
• eaten by a mother crocodile after kidnapping her child
• falling with a scared horse down the side of a volcano
• collapsing with a bridge of questionable integrity
• poisoned by food of questionable integrity
• traveller's illness of indeterminate nature
• volcano
• sand storm
• pirahna feeding frenzy
• victims of a bus accident due to questionable driving decisions of a bus driver ex. passing on a blind curve
• electrocution by a too short electric shower head
• drug overdose, if I bought drugs as often as I've been offered them lately (marajuana 4 times & cocaine once) it would happen sooner or later
• attacked by rabid and/or feral street animals

La tierra en el norte de Perú es completamente diferente que la de Ecuador. Descendimos de las montañas en la noche, y no nos dimos cuenta de cuanto nuestros alrededores estaban cambiando. Aquí es un desierto. En algunas partes donde hay ríos hay irrigación y por eso agricultura. Pero sobre todo, la tierra es plana y seca y el tiempo está caliente.
En las partes secas afuera de las ciudades, hay áreas grades cubiertas en basura - muchas veces basura quemada (y que de vez en cuando está quemando).
En Perú no hemos visto gente en ropa tradicional, tampoco hemos escuchado idiomas indígenas. (No se si va a cambiar cuando lleguemos al sur o en las montañas.)
Vimos unas ruinas de la gente que vivía aquí antes de las incas. Pero porque son construido de adobe no son bien preservadas. Las ruinas de Sipán (cerca Chiclayo) es hecho por la gente Moche y Chan Chan (cerca Trujillo y Huanchaco) por la gente Chimú. Chan Chan es la ciudad de adobe más grande del mundo, pero porque es adobe no va a durar....