Hello friends.

Though this is technically a blog, we've cheated a bit so that you can follow our journey chronologically from top to bottom (instead of the usual bottom to top action in a blog). In sum, we've spent 3.5 weeks travelling in Peru and the last month living with our host great-grandparents in the lovely, and slightly hectic, city of Cochabamba, Bolivia. If all goes according to plan, we'll be leaving Cocha tomorrow for 2 weeks of travelling in Bolivia and Chile, before returning here for 3 months to volunteer. Huzzah.

Note: double clicking pictures will make them bigger.

Lima

Lima was our first stop. Here are a couple things we saw there: many bones arranged in pretty patterns in the catacombs of an old monastery, handsome child manequins, scary police trucks ready to devour the many Limeño protesters downtown, and insane traffic with no lights (not pictured).

Ica

After a couple of unremarkable days (except for an incredibly delicious and slightly drunken lunch hosted by Jeff´s parents' friends' friend, Alfredo), we took a bus south down the very, very dry coast of Peru. After spending time in the affluent neighbourhoods of Lima, on the way out of the city we were able to see the sprawling slums. Presumably this is where all the kids come from who perform acrobatics at busy intersections for loose change. (They weren´t right downtown though... Guess they're not allowed to interfere with all the important business folks.)

Though a kind teacher on our bus warned us about the neighbourhood we were planning on staying in ("prostitutes, watch out!"), we found our hostal quite snug... and incredibly noisy. Mostly due to the lovely three-wheel-converted-motorcycles called mototaxis pictured below (inside and out).

The average skin colour seems to drop down a few melanins outside of Lima, so we stood out a lot more in Ica than Lima. Especially Leah, whose fairness continues to thwart Jeff's attempt to pass himself off as a Spanish-descended Latinamericano.

Huacachina

Huacachina is a little oasis in the desert right outside of Ica. The main industry seems to be dune buggy/sandboarding tours in the desert. The dune buggying is like a roller coast, only more fun and more sandy, and it lasts for a couple hours. After fifteen stomach churning minutes of driving, the driver would pull up to a particularly high dune, turn to us, and say "sundbord!" We tried strapping our feet to the boards, but in the end it worked better when we just lay down on our stomachs and shot down the hills like sandy tobogganing (how the hell do you spell that?). If we had arrived two days later we would have been able to watch the South American downhill slalom sandboarding championships. We're not kidding.

Tomás showing us how it's done.

On the other side of the buggy it said House of Sand in Spanish (Case de Arena) but with hebrew letters.

Another buggy.

You said it.

The Nazca Lines

Took a bus from Ica to the little town of Nazca so that we could see the famous Nazca lines. We saw them through the windows of a tiny 6-seater airplane. Jeff almost puked. The lines were carved into the desert a really long time ago, when people moved aside darker stones to reveal ligther ground underneath. There are over 800 shapes, figures and lines. The ones below are very big and very mysterious and very well aligned with something astrological. If you want better information, look them up on wikipedia or something. jeez.

The hummingbird. (Double click the picture to enlarge it.)

The Monkey. (Also double click this one.)

Manequins enjoying the last supper in an Arequipan monastery. (Arequipa was our next stop.)

The Colca Canyon (Arequipa)

From Nazca, we headed for Arequipa, mostly because this city is near the Colca Canyon. The canyon is super deep - second deepest in the world (the deepest is right beside it). We hiked from 3200m down to 2100m the first day, and back up again the next. It's desert down one side and green partway up the other, with a river cutting through the bottom of the canyon. You can still see zig zag paths that go right up and over the mountains- old Inca trails from the coast to Cuzco.

We spent the night in a little stone room in one of the tiny villages that are spread along the green part of the canyon. The people in the canyon lead (to us) incredibly isolated lives, cultivating the steep sides of the canyon on terraces, and of course, selling coca cola and bottled water to gringo hikers like us. The place where we stayed only got electricity a month before we arrived.

Walking from the village towards the canyon.

Entering the abyss.

On the way down.

Entering the valley.

Leah. Reflecting in our room.

Hiking along the "moist" side of the valley, looking back on the side we came down the day before.

Hiking up the desert side of the canyon.

The intrepid duo

We stopped for a break in an oasis where the swimming pool is fed by springs that come out of the mountain. This is where we both felt the wrath of the sun at high altitude. We´re not posting the pictures of our full body sunburns- the photos are just too cruel.

White flowers that grow in the valley. (Caption is worth the neck cramp.)

Leah. Semi-comatose after climbing out of the canyon. (Our first experience with high altitude hiking.)

What's the matter, ain't ya evah seen a chick kicking a soccer ball before? This was actually apolitical symbol for the local mayoral race.

Cuzco

After an exhilerating semi-cama overnight ride from Arequipa, we showed up in Cuzco - the capital of the Incan empire when the Spanish sacked it 500 years ago or thereabouts. Architecturally, downtown Cuzco is a beautiful mix of some remaining Incan structures (specifically, wildly sturdy walls built without any kind of mortar or cement) and Spanish built churches. Though sometimes it´s hard to marvel at the gold laden Spanish chapels without thinking about the incredibly cruel regime they inflicted on this continent so that they could produce these buildings - slavery, genocide, you know, lots of good stuff. (Incan history is, of course, bloody as well.)

Overall, we found the contrast between the overwhelmingly touristy downtown scene and the general poverty and destitution everywhere else in the city a bit hard to deal with. It was not a good feeling when maitre d´s would shoo away begging street kids and then apologize for the unpleasant interruption. It's hard to imagine what it's like to spend your whole life trying to sell stuff to tourists in front of fancy restaurants - being able to see heaping platter after heaping platter appear - knowing that you'll never be inside it. Of course, this doesnt only happen in Cuzco, but Latin America has some of the highest rates of income inequality in the world, and Cuzco seemed like quite the microcosm.

Here are some pics (and a drawing) from our hostal´s rooftop patio which overlooked the city, and some of Cuzco´s streets. There´s also a drawing of a llama. The llama is standing on a sidewalk because there´s a local industry of women and little girls in indigenous dress walking around the city with llamas posing for pictures, for a fee.

The view from our hostel's rooftop patio

The main plaza. Which is better, Leah's attempt or the camera's? Only we know for sure.

Inca stonework- no mortar!

Festival of the Virgin. People paraded all around the city carrying statues of the virgin on their backs.
Narrow street. Does this really need a caption?

The Inca Trail

We weren´t planning on doing the Inca trail - a 4 day hike that follows an old Inca path from the Sacred Valley outside Cuzco to Macchu Picchu, one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world - because we'd heard it was expensive and needed to be booked months in advance. It turns out there are advantages to travelling in the off season, and if you love rain, you´re really in luck. We found a cheap tour three days before we wanted to go, and we couldn't turn it down.

The Inca trail was both the hardest and the most luxurious hike we've ever done. Porters (incredibly strong local dudes) carry all the food and shelter. Essentials on the Inca trail include plastic stools so you never have to sit on the ground, popcorn and cookies for tea time at 5 o clock, a dining tent that fits fifteen people around a little plastic table, and three hot meals every day. This is likely the result of intense free market competition between the insane amount of tour operators - especially now that you cant legally hike the trail without guides. (Hooray for liberated commerce!)

The porters shot consistently past us on the trail, with everything cleverly tied to their backs with tarps, ropes and squares of cloth and their feet strapped into the rubber sandals (made from old car tires) that everyone wears here. By the time we arrived at the campsite each night, our tents and food were ready and waiting.

The climb gave us a whole new respect for mountain climbers. Making a pass at 4200m, Jeff nearly blacked out because of the altitude: numb hands, tunnel vision, and leah taking his pack (after a lot of persuasion). Fortunately, there were coca leaves and lunch waiting at the top. Unfortunately, our camera stopped working on the second day, so we dont have pictures to do justice to the incredible mountains, the valleys filled with mist, and the ruins we saw (and sometimes didnt see due to heavy fog) all along the way.

The international crew on our tour was pretty cool, and we were taken by surprise by the pot breaks the French guys took every couple of hours. Hedgey was outdone. The night before our early morning hike to the sun gate and then macchu picchu itself, our entire tour gathered (illegally!) in the ruins close to our campsite to make an offering to pachemama (mother earth). We sat in the dark and played priest - in spanish, french, and english - with the various substances we had at our disposal. Disrespectful? Probably. Fun? Definitely.

Some ruins.

The sacred valley.

This tree is known as Doctorius seussius and it grows out of a local cactus species.

Jeff in 10 years.

Leah crossed with a monkey. (Guess who drew this one.)

At Gopal and Drupadi's

Our next plan was to get off the gringo trail offered by the Lonely Planet and follow up on a tip Leah received while dining alone in a veggie restaurant in Cuzco. (Aside: she was alone because Jeff was experiencing his first round of tummy troubles, which kept up for the next month. It turns out he was waging a war with some persistent "parasitos," which were determined to be living in his guts after a very special test. You see, Jeff thought he was going to have a blood test done to help determine the cause of the problem. The nice lady at the clinic handed him a plastic cup. Jeff was confused. The kind lady kept repeating "copralogico" despite Jeff´s lack of understanding. Finally, she shouted, in english, FECES! Oh. That kind of test.) Anyway, this friendly woman from Lima told Leah about her friends Gopal and Drupadi who live on an organic farm outside of Cuzco and have three rooms that they rent out by the night.

So we followed her slightly vague directions and ended up on a beautiful, tranquil, self-sufficiency-oriented organic farm in the Sacred Valley. We ate tasty veggie food with Gopal (a late middle aged man of french canadian origin) and Drupadi (younger and of Peruvian origin) and their kids, hung out with the cute kittens, dogs and horses, relaxed to the tunes of the Cranberries and ancient Jewish Sephardic melodies from the middle ages (!) and listened to Gopal expound upon his spiritual beliefs, with his mouth full of coca leaves, black, cold coffee, and cigarettes - literally. One time he ashed in his hand and then ate it. They also had a great DVD selection.

The spacious innards of their house - built entirely of local materials.

One of the house kittens.

Looking out from their front door.

The family dog, Bebe, taking a nap.

The coca leaf spread, laid out on the table before the arrival of organizers from the Andean Indigenous University movement. They´re into reclaiming their cultural heritage and knowledge.

A family horse.
cats and dogs

Crossing the Border

We reluctantly took our leave from Drupadi and Gopals´ house and headed for the Bolivian border. The bus ride to Puno was cold and featured the worst food we had eaten yet- Leah´s fault, she bought the mouth puckeringly-salty cheese sandwiches and the big loaf of mouldy tasting bread. Our trip to the border itself started with an incredibly full van (see drawing below, but add in an extra row of people facing backwards), and finished with a bicycle taxi that couldn´t make it up the hill to Bolivia; we had to walk while the driver pushed our stuff. On the Bolivian side, we spent a night on the very scenic Isla del Sol on Lake Titicaca, the world´s highest navigable lake. Everything in Bolivia is the highest or second highest something. We passed the next day lounging near grazing donkeys and sheep and the little boys who were herding them, and enjoying the view.

Catching a van out of Puno to the border. (Note the bicycle taxis.)

On the way to Isla del Sol.

Isla del Sol.

Our van ride to the border. (Slightly more crowded than it appears.)

(Our) Life in Cochabamba

After leaving Isla del Sol, we took a bus from Copacabana to La Paz that had an unexpected interruption. We were ordered to get off the bus and watched as our bus drove onto a very sketchy looking barge. Fortunately we were able to follow our bus on a rickety boat across the channel. We spent that night in the capital, La Paz, and left for Cochabamba early in the morning.

After 3.5 weeks of travelling, we wanted our own room real bad. And we got one in the lovely one story house of Vita and René (our host great grandparents), in the tranquil Juan XXIII suburb of Cochabamba, Bolivia´s third largest city. Our neighbourhood was built by a community of ex-miners who moved to the city after the crash of the mining industry, and is now, economically, somewhere in the middle classes.

Cochabamba was also the site of the (in)famous water wars of 2000 when the city´s water system was sold to Bechtel and the entire city was up in arms. René told us recently that the neighbourhood wells from which we get our water - that were built and are maintained by the neighbourhood commitee - were "given" to the giant multinational as well during the privatization. Needless to say, René spent two weeks in the street with the vast majority of Cochabambinos.

Vita cooks all our meals, and when they´re ready, she yells LEAH! or sometimes LIYAH!, because she can´t say jeff´s name. Once she tried and it came out something like jack or jesse or Chuh. Jeff now goes by the name Miguelito. We go to spanish school in the mornings and in the afternoons we wander around the city or lie in our room and read (jeff reads the dictionary and his grammar book). The city has some amazingly crowded markets, many beggars, lots of ice cream, good italian food, fresh squeezed orange juice vendors on every corner, lovely plazas, and very few gringos. If you want to have a secret language that no one can understand, just show up here and speak english. Don´t worry about those other white people you might bump into, they probably speak german.

In sum, Vita and René our an incredibly, always laughing, cute couple who mumble to us in Spanish without moving their lips and love describing Bolivian traditions and foods and inevitably bicker (while chuckling) over the smallest details in their stories. René especially likes to talk about a type of chicha (fermented maize beverage) that´s called chicha chernobyl. Great name. One time he told us about how a gang of transexual prostitutes mugged him in Sao Paulo. When he was searching for the Spanish word for transexual, Vita muttered while chewing, "lesbianas." René wasnt satisfied with that answer. Another time, René got us to chant "Viva Bolivia" and then "Muera Manfred." Manfred is the current prefect of Cochabamba.

The family on the patio: René, Vita, Melanie (the baby) and Nico (the one with the white fur).

The New Years lunch that lasted from 3pm to midnight. We left at 6.

Leah´s rendering of Pinocho, the cat that sort of lives with us.