La Paz is awesome.

We are still in La Paz, which is a really cool city. Firstly, it is the world´s highest capital, sitting at around 4000 metres. Secondly, it sits inside of a huge bowl, with buildings reaching as high as they can on the hill. It looks amazing at night. Thirdly, the markets are crazy! There are parts of the market that take up 4 city blocks continuously. We got totally lost in it a couple of times, just wandering until we found the edge. Everything is super cheap; the exchange sits at 8 Bolivianos to the dollar, and we are buying gloves for 10, food for 12, accomodations for 27 each. It´s awesome.

Yesterday we did a bike trip on the "death road", which is considered the world´s most dangerous road. For bikes it is fine, but we saw many graves and crosses representing cars, some bikes or even entire busses that went over the edge. The worst was a bus of 50. We respected the road a little more after seeing that. It was a fun ride with some crazy views, and the descent from 4000 metres to 1300 gave us a good perspective of the levels of climate that Bolivia is known for. We ended up in Coroico, a jungle town, where we hung out at a cool hotel with a pool and buffet, which we obviously abused to no end.
Now we are trying to figure out where we are going next. We want to see a few more towns or cities in Bolivia, and we´ll have to sit down with a map and figure out where we have time/money to go.

The next update will probably be from another town, maybe Sucre or Cochabamba, and we will try to post more photos, but these computers are limited. There will be way more photos once we get into Chile. In any case, you´ll hear from us soon, and wish us luck with the busses this time....

Saludos,

Ron

La Paz

We finally made it to La Paz, after the longest morning of my life...



When the bus arrived at the border we were supposed to get our passports stamped but Shawn had forgotten one of his papers in his large bag inside the bus storage. We had to wait until the bus driver returned so that Shawn could get into his bag after which began the most disorganized border crossing process we had ever seen. We finished just in time to see our bus coasting away happily on the highway towards La Paz (with our bags, of course)...



We immediately decided that we would chase the bastard down, so we changed some money and then hired the "fastest" cab we could find. We unknowingly paid 3 times the regular amount for the cab, but he was a good guy, and a fast driver. We passed our bus, went to the wrong station, then hired another cab (which also cost way too much) to take us to the main city station. We snatched our bags back and then launched into an hour long yelling match...customer service here is WAY different...it`s the customer`s fault most of the time...anyways, after involving the tourist police, we eventually got reimbursed with the money that the taxi SHOULD have cost and left it at that...



We napped at our hostel for a few hours afterwards and now we are out at an internet cafe, getting ready to find a decent meal....man, what a long day....tomorrow is going to be much, much better. We have some HUGE markets to hit up, they sell everything here!



Ron out

STILL IN CUSCO!

Cusco is a beautiful city, but it WON´T LET US GO! We had our bus tickets last night, finally able to leave (Shawn feeling fully recovered), and when we got to the bus station they told us that there was a strike. Busses weren´t being let through Puno or the Bolivia/Peru border. This meant that we had to take a cab back and find another hostel. We woke up to find that we had been charged not for the room, but per person, which was VERY annoying. We only really lost 7 dollars worth of money, but everything´s relative here; 7 dollars is some heavy cash! Anyways, we are now trying to kill the many hours we have until our bus tonight, and we are keeping our fingers crossed that the strike is over today (which is what they told us....is that how strikes work here?). Anyways, hopefully we´ll update when we are in La Paz tomorrow morning..

Talk to you guys later,

Ron

Still in Cusco

We´re still here in Cusco. Last night Shawn started feeling sick, so we went to the hostel, and it turned out that some food we had eaten recently had gotten to him. I guess I´m lucky, because we have eaten at the same restaurant for every meal..anyways, he had a restless night, and this morning we decided to get a doctor over to our hostel. He was great, very professional, and he told us exactly what to do. I made some trips out to get liquids and medicine at the pharmacy, and it seems that Shawn has stabilized. We are going to stay an extra day in Cusco, just to make sure he is totally fine; it´s looking like we will be able to buy our bus tickets today. In any case, no worries, he´s fine, so am I, and we´re probably going to head out for a light breakfast soon.

Report back soon,

Ron


P.S. The Salkantay trail was great, we did three days of trail trekking, first gaining in altitude (4600 metres) then dropping from the alpine down into the jungle. During the last two days, we stayed in a small town where we played some futbol (soccer) games with some Peruvians and got absolutely obliterated, even though we had 3 Brazilians, and then headed to Aguas Calientes, the good looking, expensive gateway to Machu Pïcchu. The meals were great and huge every day and night, and of course, Machu Picchu was excellent, it is such a cool looking city in the clouds. Shawn and I climbed the mountain overlooking the ruins (Huaynapicchu) in 25 minutes, where it said it took an hour. Frankly, Machu Picchu would have looked better without all the tourists, but then I guess complaining about them makes me a hypocrite...anyways, once again, goodbye.

Cusco!

We made it to Cusco, and it is awesome! It looks totally different from any other city in Peru, way more European, with cobblestone and narrow streets. There are so many places to run around that it almost seems overbearing. We set up our 5 day trek to Machu Picchu tonight, and got a great deal, mostly because we are the cheap bastards that run around to all the different touring places and threaten them with lower prices elsewhere (I love carrying 5 different flyers in my hand and throwing them on the desk; it really gets them warmed up for some haggling). In any case, we are going to be tackling Peruvian back country for almost a week, so don´t expect an update in a little bit, though, when it does come, expect a bombardment of Machu Picchures...anyways, we´ve got to meet some people for drinks soon, and we have to grab some Coca leaves before we start the hike, so farewell for five days, and wish us luck.

Ron

More Pix

Hey, Shawn here. Got a few more photos for you. We are now at Lake Titicaca in a town called Puno. It's very cold here because the elevation is nearly 4000m above sea level.

The first photo is of some of the many thousands of sand dunes near Ica. Sandboarding was actually faily un-fun, unless you rode the board like a sled. It is impossible to turn and you basically fall directly down the hill and get completely filled and covered with sand. So to all the Canadians: Be proud, snowboarding is infinitely superior! I must admit though, it was a lot of fun riding the dune buggy up to the slopes.

The second photo is of one of the domesticated birds that freely lived at the Haucachina Oasis. They were friendly and (as you can see) let me get some very close-up photos of them. I made sure to take lots of bird photos for whoever likes parrots and such.

We went on a long car tour of the coast near Paracas. There was an absolutely revolting bathroom with an absolutely spectacular view out the back window (photo 3). It was a bit of a tourist trap area with food that cost 4 times as much as elsewhere, so we just had a drink each and ate about 10 bowls of free corn nuts. Very economical.

The last photo is from one of our many bus rides. I can't remember

exactly which one, but I think it was when we were heading back to Arequipa following our 3-day trek in the Colca Canyon. We made a lot of friends on the trip - a few people from Seattle, a couple of Australian girls, and two well-travelled guys named Tom. One of them was from Austria and the other was from Zimbabwe. We talked about nik-naks, chappies, Johnny Clegg, and all the other things I could remember from Southern Africa. :)

That's all for now. The internet here is fast-ish but the pictures are huge and uploading them still takes a while. Unfortunately there is no program available to shrink them, but I know that most people reading this will have super-fast connections anyways. Anyways, cheers from Lake Titicaca.

-Shawn

Arequipa

We just got to Arequipa, which is a really nice looking town about 12 hours southeast of Ica. It´s pretty cool, but certainly a tourist center. The merchants attack from all sides....I´m going to phone some contacts I made in Ica and if we´re lucky they´ll show us right to the best places. Tomorrow we´ll see if we can check out Colca canyon, which is apparently incredibly deep. There are trek packages that take 6 days to get down. We´ll see how we feel..I´m certainly in the mood for a good hike! More good news later.

Huacachina

We got to Huacachina last night around 7, and we immediately found a pretty decent hostel; it has a swimming pool, bar, and foozball. Not bad. We met up with an Australian dude named Dane, and we´re all heading into Ica to check out some wineries. When we come back we´re going to do a couple hours of sandboarding (this place is totally surrounded by massive dunes, they take you up in a crazy buggy and then let you ride down). I´ll report back tonight.

Departure for Ica

We are leaving Lima today. It was great, but we came pretty close to dying from over-exposure to decadence (we got brutally spoiled by my family..enough is enough..). We are bussing south to Ica, where there is an oasis called Huacachina. It´s a fancy little place, and we´re basically going to do some sandboarding there for a day and then head south again to Arequipa, which is apparently a beautiful city. We are sorry to see Lima go, but the adventure must continue! We´ll post photos, and perhaps videos of our sandboarding ventures when we can. Adios!