Lake Titicaca and the Isla del Sol

The Isla del Sol or Island of the Sun is the center of the Incan creation myth.  The sun god Inti bore the first Inca, Manco Capac out of stone on the island.

We booked a bus to Cuzco with a two day stopover in Copacabana through the same tour company which took us to Tiwanaku.  They picked us up at 7 in the morning and spend the next two and a half hours driving around La Paz picking up the people lucky enough to be able to sleep in or at least stay at their hotel until breakfast began.  It was pretty miserable, especially since I was having digestive problems.  If you’re going from La Paz to Copacabana via tour bus, make sure you’re the last people picked up.

On the way to Copacabana there’s a strait that connects Lake Titicaca with the smaller lake to its South.  Bolivia, not believing in bridges, has an original way of dealing with this.  Get off the bus, pay 20 cents, get on a boat for 20 minutes and wait for your bus to cross, passengerless, on a flat barge.  I suppose I can’t blame a poor nation with as many regime changes in its history as telenovelas, but this bridge would need to be half the size of the George Washington Bridge in New York.

We made it to Copacabana where for the first time in our travels we didn’t have a hostel pre-booked.  There were slim pickins when it comes to the town of Copacabana on hostelbookers.  In La Paz we bumped into the German couple we had met at La Dolce Vita in Sucre and they recommended a hostel called La Cupula.  Although it sounded expensive, the town of Copacabana looked run down, and we decided that if we could find it, we would take it.  It was well worth it.  Beautiful views of the bay, nice rooms, good showers, who cares if it was our most expensive hostel in Bolivia.

We had no time to lose, we went to the office for our tour company in Copacabana, confirmed our bus to Cuzco, and booked a boat to the Isla del Sol for only $3.50 each.  The next day when we arrived for our 8:30 boat, the reason for the inexpensiveness was evident; there were already more people on it than it could fit.  We squeezed in and spent two and a half hours on a very slow boat to the Northern part of the island.  

We arrived in a small town with pigs shading themselves under small boats, took a quick look at the museum and got started on our hike.  The scenery was grand, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.  The island is sunbaked but not a desert.  Grass grows and livestock graze along terraces that become very steep at parts.  The walk was 8 kilometers and the road was pretty well worn.  It follows the spine of the island and shows terraces gliding into crescent bays, smaller islands dotted in the infinite blue of the world’s highest lake and the largest lake in South America.  Across the lake to the East, the Cordillera Real rose above the clouds which made the peaks look disembodied, like jagged, foundationless castles.   Llamas, vicunas, and alpacas roamed, the earliest Incan ruins still stood unmoved including an ancient altar.

We joined up with two other hikers, Jag and Ben, a married man from London whose wife didn’t feel up to the hike and a medical student already accepted to Vanderbilt taking a gap year, respectively.  We walked and talked and admired the views.  Different people had set up gates on the trail and extorted more money out of us as we passed although it was less than a dollar each time we were pretty indignant at the arbitrariness of it all.  The boat ride back was equally crowded and even slower than the boat ride to the island.  I seemed to be staring at the same mountain just in front of Copacabana for an hour and a half without getting any closer to it.  Eventually though, we did get back and I discovered that I was far more sunburnt than I anticipated being.

So we prepared to leave the next day, everything was shaping up for our entry into our final country, Peru, and then we found it.  An eight month old calico kitten.  Amanda was in love and I was questioning whether we’d ever leave this hostel for anything.  It was adorable and yes it did try to play with my face in the night as we let it sleep with us, but even I was enamored of this guileless being.

Copacabana's town center.

Somehow I convinced her to leave and get on the bus the next day and we walked into Peru.  We changed buses in Puno and because of very poor communication on our guide’s part had seats across the aisle from each other on the six hour bus ride from Puno to Cuzco.  To make matters worse we were each sitting next to Peruvian women who had made a trip to Bolivia in order to go on the shopping spree of the century.  They were rude, they piled their goods on top of themselves until they were up to their heads, they tried to put their shit on top of us, and they wouldn’t switch seats with us even though they were traveling together and it would have given them more room to put their crap.  To make matters even worse, they had a 12 year old boy with them who they neglected to purchase a seat for, so when the person whose seat the boy was sitting in boarded the bus he had to sit on a bag in the aisle.  Eventually he just laid down in the aisle and started to sleep… on my foot.  Since everyone had excess baggage and children in the aisle it was also impossible to get to the bathroom.  Our first glimpse of Peru was the bus ride from hell, but in our path stood Machu Picchu so there was reason to be optimistic.

Crazy Town South America- La Paz, Bolivia

After our long relaxing stay in Sucre we said goodbye to our Spanish teacher and guesthouse hosts and took the bus to the capital of Bolivia, La Paz.  We reserved our tickets early so we got the front seats on the second floor of the bus.  Unfortunately the movie (which we could not see) was extremely loud and could not even be drowned out with earplugs or Ipods. The trip was pretty annoying to say the least.  We also encountered our first locked bus bathroom and random people sleeping in the aisle and on the stairs. At the rest stop we ended up peeing on the side of the road after making the decision that it was probably safer (health wise) than the “bathroom.”   

When we finally made it into town at about 6:30am, we checked into the Cruz de los Andes hostel in the Rosario neighborhood (which is pretty much backpacker central). The famous Witches Market was right down the street, where we saw lots of dried llama fetus and trinkets.  

The first full day we just relaxed, walked the Brado (main street) and Dan ate the “World’s Hottest Vinadaloo” at the Star of India restaurant. It was pretty spicy but they really get you with the portion. Dan was full up and sweaty for the rest of the night.  The free tee shirt was basically about 90 bolivianos because that’s what we had to spend on beer for Dan to get that curry down.

The next day we took a tour to Tiwanaku, a pre-Incan ruin on the altiplano two hours outside of La Paz. Our tour included the cutest, happiest baby ever (escorted by a young Argentinian couple), an older German guy who knew way too many languages, a Mexican man who drew lots of sketches, a Brazilian women and another Argentinian couple.  Our tour guide was very well informed and explained everything in Spanish even we could understand (and then in English too!).

It was really interesting to see the ancient monoliths (statues) and half excavated pyramid. The people of Tiwanaku (year 100- 1300 AD we think) were pretty fucking smart. They built their temple according to the sun’s cycles, so they knew what day of the year it was. They also carved a hole in one wall that closely resembles a human ear. When someone speaks into it, their voice is magnified and could be heard across the temple (which our tour guide demonstrated). Conversely, if you put your ear next to the hole you could hear someone whispering from meters away.  When the Spanish conquistadors came, most of their civilization already gone, but that didn’t stop the Catholics from attempting to behead and bury their monoliths and use their stones to build churches in La Paz (still there today).

After a long day of learning we headed to the expat pub, Oliver’s Travels.  It was slow night but that didn’t stop the English bartender from enticing us into a game of trivia with a newlywed couple on their honeymoon.  This strange game of trivia involved listing actors who had been in every movie of two separate trilogies. Basically we just yelled out actors we thought of until we got one, and then we had to figure out which trilogies they were in.  In the end we got free shots and had a great time. Dan also wrote the fifty states and their capitals faster than the barman had ever seen. His list is now proudly displayed behind the bar.

The next day we attempted to walk down past the seat of government (hoping to catch a glimpse of Evo Morales) to the ritzy Sopacachi neighborhood. It took us forever mostly due to the lack of oxygen at 11,160 feet. Plus all the stairs and exhaust, it was pretty rough. We did see the famous San Pedro prison, but we weren’t invited in and that’s cool with us.

La Paz is an amazing city that was built in a crevasse. I don’t think anyone ever expected it to get as big as it is now, the poor Bolivians living on the mountainsides are constantly trying to wedge themselves downward, while the rich simply build up to the sky. We thought it was a mind blowing place to visit. Next on to Copacabana! 

 

A is for Atheist

I don't believe in god and neither does Amanda.  I don't believe in the actual existence of god, Jesus, Yahweh, or Allah.  I give more leeway to polytheistic religions, Greek mythology, Hinduism, Incan mythology for example.  While Shiva, Zeus, and Pachamama do not exist in a literal sense, they are something that monotheistic gods are not, that is a useful and true way to describe nature and other human beings.  While the god of the Bible claims to be omnipotent and omniscient, the god Shiva represents destruction and the god Brahma represents creation.  In this way the god of the Bible is useless to describe forces in nature or in human nature that actually exist, but the religion of Hinduism describes the more ineffable elements of reality rather clearly.  Neither Shiva nor Brahma exist, but the concepts behind them do.

We don't believe in god because there is no reason to believe that any supernatural forces exist.  There is no evidence for their existence and the definitions of the metaphysical beings that people do believe in are contradictory in ways that make their impossibility easy to demonstrate in only a few sentences.  

I remember when I let go of believing in god.  I almost remember the day.  I was 16 years old, and I was at church.  It had been a long time coming, I realized when I was in 7th grade that when I prayed silently, I was talking to nothing.  I realized this but I wasn't ready to let go yet, it can be hard when you have an hour long class every day on the subject of religion with tests, and everyone you've ever met has been Catholic.  It stewed in me.  I tried to believe that the wafer at Mass was Jesus and concentrated on feeling different after I had consumed it, because if it really was Jesus I should feel differently after consuming it.  But I never felt anything, and when I did the feeling proved artificial on further examination.  First I admitted that Jesus wasn't the piece of bread, then I admitted that he wasn't god, then I admitted that there was no god.  The process took about three years.  And when I reached the last step, I began one of the happiest weeks of my life.  The whole world was new, guilt was transformed into joy.  Anything was possible, but evil was still evil and good was still good they were just slightly redefined.  I was able to completely develop a moral code that rested on what is actually moral and what is actually not.  Taking the "Lord's name" in vain or challenging authority was no longer wrong.  The only rule was to be good to others, to love, and to admit the truth of life regardless of how painful or unpopular it is, or its consequences.

There is no god, no one to tell you what's right and wrong, no being watching you from the sky, no hereafter, no sin, no salvation.  That has been my freedom, my joy.  I feel prouder to be an atheist than anything else that I am.  I'm happier as an atheist than I was before or could have been other wise.

So on this holiday season I'd like to take this opportunity to tell anyone who might happen upon this blog who has their doubts, but feels constrained by the ideas that have been fed them since early Childhood, who feels the weight of guilt or fear at their own ideas at what they know deep down inside like I did when I first started questioning, come out.  But come out intelligently, don't get kicked out of your house at 16 by telling your insane fundie parents that you don't believe.  If you're under 20, please play the game until you can keep yourself afloat.  After that, come out and let everyone know that you don't believe, you're not afraid, and you're still a good person.  There are always more of us around you than you think.

The Salar de Uyuni and the Southern Altiplano Part 3

This part of our traveling experience took three parts to write because it was so intense.  We spent three days in a Toyota 4x4 from the 90s rambling over pathways recognizable only by the ruts of former AWD vehicles.  It was dusty; we didn’t have any showers; we didn’t choose our meals, our hotels, or our route.   We saw places on this Earth that I, even with my geographic expertise and vivid imagination, had never even conceived of.

Pitch black on the outskirts of a town with no streetlights we woke up at 3:30 in the morning on the last day of our tour.  We’re lucky that we had such a good driver.  He didn’t speak much, and he didn’t know any English, but he drove safely.  More people die on the Salar de Uyuni tour than the Death Road near La Paz every year because too often drivers are reckless or even intoxicated on roads that don’t exist.  But our driver was excellent in the desert night, feeling his way over the rough terrain cautiously, as the gloaming revealed the silhouette of a ridge on our left and a plain on our right.  After an hour of driving we reached the edge of white ground.  The sky was lighting quickly and we were worried that we would miss the sunrise proper, but we were right on time.  We stopped in the middle of the salt flat, any distance was impossible to determine, the horizon was as flat as the ocean, and the sun rose like molten metal being poured upward into a perfect invisible mold.

It was truly too early for this.  Up at 3:30, in front of the sunrise until about 6 am, we still hadn’t eaten breakfast, but somehow the altitude decreases your appetite as does the frigid air.  We drove across the flats to Incahausi, an island of rock in the center of a long dry sea of salt.  It has big saguaro cacti, seriously.  We took a half hour hike around the island and came back to a basic breakfast of bread, butter, jam, and tea.  There were also llamas.  It seems ridiculous for llamas to be there because the nearest non-salt-flat land had to be over 50 kilometers away, but again, it’s impossible to tell how far away anything is on the Salar. 

 

When we got back in the car, we stopped on the other side of the island and took pictures.  The far edge of the Salar was not visible, which proved to be the point.  On a white space without any objects to give the eye perspective, many photographic tricks are possible and we amused ourselves by exploring the possibility for hours.  We had so much time because another 4x4 had broken down, the one that Kev and Alison were on, right where we were set to take pictures and our driver and the other driver for our tour group were helping their driver fix the vehicle.  It took a very long time for them to fix it.

 

So we were a little late since we had decided to wake up for the sunrise and were supposed to be in Uyuni at about midday, we were now on schedule to arrive in Uyuni as if we hadn’t woken up for the sunrise, at about 3pm.  This will prove to be very important.  We sailed across the salar, stopping briefly at a small place with many flags and a village with a market where we bought two small pieces of salt for about 15 cents. 

The outskirts of Uyuni are covered in plastic bags blown by the wind and caught on desert brush.  And then you come to the train graveyard, covered in the same trash that covers the desert around it.  The rusty piles of metal resting on warped tracks are the town proper’s greatest attraction.  They’re bizarre and dangerous looking and covered in graffiti that ranges from the banal to the intellectual.   Amanda climbed on them and acted like a train conductor, but I don’t know if I’m still officially immunized for tetanus so I declined.

On to Uyuni, the driver, since we didn’t arrive at a reasonable hour, billed the tour company for lunch at an almuerzo familiar place above the immigration office (bizarre right), which was alright.  It was simple, first quinoa soup, then some meat in sauce and rice.  We went around the corner to check into our hostel, the cheapest place we’ve stayed in, only 14 dollars a night for both of us in a private room sharing a bath.  Then since we were still illegal in Bolivia because we’re shifty Americans and the only nationality that needs a visa which costs 135 dollars to enter the country, we went to the only ATM in town.  No dice.  It’s Saturday.  That means that it won’t be fixed until the bank opens again on Monday.  So instead of heading off to Sucre on Sunday, we were stuck in Uyuni after the immigration officer, who was a very nice man, locked our passports in a safe at the immigration office.  We rested in Uyuni and on Monday when the ATM was fixed there was a line across the street, and we only had an hour to get money, get a visa, and get on the bus to Sucre at 10.  I waited in line, as Amanda went to the immigration office to fill out the paperwork, when I finally got money I sprinted there.  They put our visa in our passports with time to spare and we were off to Sucre after showing off the skills that would make us favorites if we were ever on The Amazing Race.