Bolivia!

It seems like we've been very lazy lately. We don't seem to have the motivation to do much blogging or filtering of our pictures. I'm not sure why. Perhaps now that we've passed the 3 month mark it's not as exciting. It may be the closest thing that we do that resembles work and that's why we avoid it! How funny is that? Or perhaps its because it really is hard to go through all the hundreds of pictures that we take and only select the ones that are good enough to post and tell you all about. We really should try to do better but oh well. Here's the latest on the Macaulay's adventure!

Arequipa

From Colca Canyon

We wrapped up our time in Arequipa with Easter Sunday and a trip to Colca Canyon. Easter was very nice, we got a couple of chocolate eggs from the tourist street vendors and some wonderfully-smelling Easter Lillies for our room to make it a little festive in our hotel and went to mass in the Cathedral. It was a great wrap-up to Holy week. The next day we hopped on a tour of the Colca Canyon which is almost the deepest in the world (There's one nearby that's slightly deeper). We took a three day tour, which involved hiking all the way down the canyon and staying in a village on the opposite side. The trail we took is the only way to reach these villages, who live on agriculture fed by the waters of the mountains above. The canyon itself was very deep (over 13,600 feet in its deepest part) and we descended all the way down (we weren't in the deepest part though) to the river and halfway up the next side that first day. The place we stayed on the opposite side had a wonderful family who fed us a delicious meal and breakfast the next day. Our group was only four people, us two, the guide (Hornorio) and Peruvian tourist Pablo. We had a great time together and spent the entire three days speaking spanish! We felt more confident than ever in our language skills after that. The next day we hiked back down to an “Oasis” which was full of palm trees and swimming pools fed by a spring gushing out of the canyon wall. After a relaxing swim and nap in the hammocks, we started up the canyon to reach our hotel back on the top. This was a very demanding 3 hour hike straight up the canyon with absolutely no flat parts. Suzanne was sorely tempted by a passing donkey train by the driver's calls for “Taxi?” but she resisted the urge to use her “Suzanne dollars”. Then we hopped on a bus back to Arequipa, with a quick stop at some hot springs to soak our sore legs and another stop at the highest point in the area (4910m or 16,200 feet!). It's crazy thinking that in Colorado the highest peaks are only 14,000 feet and here we were at 16,200! Little did we know that that was only the beginning!
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Puno and entering Bolivia
After returning from Colca Canyon, we hopped on a bus to Puno to get over to Bolivia. We spent a couple of days in Puno, which is the main city on Lake Titicaca, taking a tour of the islands on the Peruvian side of the lake.

From Puno

Mostly Puno was our staging point to enter Bolivia. No longer can Americans just enter Bolivia. Since the election of Evo Morales, the countries first indigenous and highly popular socialist president, relations between the US and Bolivia have been a bit strained. Bolivia instituted a a system of “reciprocity” with the US. What this means is that since the US started charging $130 US Dollars for anyone who wanted to apply for a visa, Bolivia now charges the same amount to all US Citizens who would like to enter their country. Bolivia is not the only country to do this (Argentina did it to us when we flew in to Buenos Aires) but they are the worst about it. I believe their aim is to demonstrate how humiliating it is to have to spend such a large amount of money just to apply for a visa, and I believe it works. The immigration officials were extremely picky about all our details and wouldn't accept US bills with slightly worn edges or color markings. They also required ridiculous amounts of photocopies of our passports and visa pictures as well as our yellow fever vaccination certificates. Meanwhile while we're running back and forth to get our photocopies every other tourist from every other country flew by without a hassle. It was very frustrating. While I'm sure it makes the political point very effectively (at least to those who travel here) I think its very bad for their tourism industry. How many Americans would love to hop over to super cheap Bolivia (delicious dinners with alcohol only 10 bucks) after visiting super expensive Macchu Pichu but don't want to deal with the hassle we did? Who knows if I'm right but I can be certain it isn't helping. And from what we've seen of Bolivia, tourism should be something that they're promoting.
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Copacabana
I was excited about visiting Copacabana, the nicest city on Lake Titicaca from Bolivia's side mostly because of the song by Sinatra (or one of those guys) about how fun it was. Then Suzanne ruined my day by telling me that beach was in Brazil. Thanks Suzanne. But it turned out to be a nice place to stay once we got out of a terrible hotel experience. The town is beautifully situated on the lake and has a nice beach and port. It's also the jumping off point for visiting the Isla del Sol or Island of the Sun, the legendary birthplace of the Incan civilization. We did the tour of Isla del Sol, which was nice but not the best tour we've done, mostly because since the Spanish stripped all the gold off the rock of the Puma (the most sacred spot for the Incas). The Rock of the Puma is actually where the name Titicaca comes from. “Titi” means “Puma” and “Carca” means “Rock” but the Spanish messed up the name and called it “Caca”. So anyway, all the island was left to the imagination, since the island itself is kind of unremarkable, but in the end we were glad we did it.
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La Paz
We like La Paz! The semi-capital city (well, the legislative and executive branches) is amazingly built all over the inside of a canyon. There's a main avenue that goes down the center and on both sides the roads go up the sides of the canyon. It's the highest capital city in the world at 11,942 feet and you're constantly trying to catch your breath. We're staying in a nice hotel with great views of the city and mountain rising in the distance. Here we took another week to relax and get used to this new country. At first we were quite scared. Our guide books told us about many scams, corrupt police, pickpockets and the like. We've consequently upped up our precautions but luckily we haven't run into any problems yet. I think as long as you are careful, and don't make yourselves a target, you'll be fine. On Sunday we went to a soccer game in the highest stadium and had a lot of fun. One of the players reminded us of Dave Rosembaum. He was one of the smaller players on the team but one of the best, scoring 2 of the 3 goals of the winning team. Then on Monday we went on a tour of the biggest archeological sites in Bolivia (Tiahuanaco) which was a pre-Incan civilization that lasted for 1500 years before dying out. (My favorite theory is that they liked to deform the heads of their children by placing molds over their heads to mold their soft skulls into shapes they considered more beautiful. Consequently the upper class got more and more mentally ill that they couldn't handle the task of ruling their empire.) Tomorrow we're going to head to the Valley of the Moon and climb a 17er (take that Coloradans!).
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Other updates:
We've decided that we're going to take a vacation from our vacation and head back to the states for the month of July! Our main reasons are to go to the weddings of two very good friends of ours and therefore all the friends of ours who will go to their weddings. The other reason is the chance to be in the summer music video of the coolest cats in Bellingham, WA.

My brother and dad will be visiting us in June for the trip to Macchu Pichu! My mom will be coming to join us for a trip of northern Peru archeological sites at the end of July!   If anyone else would like to join us for these fun shorter trips, please let us know!

~Mike