Update like whoa

Sorry for the huge gap in blogging. Our last few days in Peru were quite hectic, and the internet in Bolivia was crazy expensive (they charged you by 15 second intervals!!), so we have had to wait until La Paz to have our internet fix.

Arequipa/Colca Canyon
So Arequipa was a cute town, and Juanita the child ice mummy is an absolute must if you're in the area. Seriously. Amazing. Eben and I had opted to go on the 1-day trip to the Colca Canyon, which, looking back, was not the best idea. Leaving at 1 in the morning is a bad way to start the day, and overall it was very rushed. For people thinking about visiting the Canyon, a 2-day trip (at least) is really the way to go. We spent a lot of time on a bus going over the bumpiest roads in the world. It was quite an adventure, never quite knowing whether you would fly out of your seat into the aisle. Paved roads? Ha! Not so much. When we finally arrived at the condor lookout point, however, all bad feelings were forgotten. These condors nest deep in the canyon and catch the winds from below to fly. They don't flap their wings but rather glide through the air. We arrived just in time to see about 5 condors rise up from the canyon and swoop through the sky. These creatures are enormous (the size of a 4-year old maybe?) and such an important part of the culture here. Watching them glide through the air, it's no wonder that they are revered so deeply. I dig it. It was the highlight of our day, though seeing the mountain where the ice mummies were discovered was another high point. Overall the day was decent enough, though a better guide and more sleep would have made it fabulous.

Puno
After a few days in Arequipa we departed for Puno, our first city along the famous Lake Titicaca. Having heard from various sources how beautiful the lake is, I personally was pretty pumped for Puno. After hopping off the bus, however, I was slightly disappointed. Puno is a gray, unimpressive city with not much to offer. Even worse, the Puno side of the lake was pretty icky. Sad! The thing to do in Puno is to explore the islands of Lake Titicaca, so on the morning of our second day, we took the ferry to the floating islands of Uros. Once we got out on the water, the clouds finally parted, and the water appeared much more lovely than the murky green water along the shore. Good way to start our tour of Uros. :) We had a funny bilingual guide who told us a lot about the islands, so I feel like we got a lot out of our trip. Having seen floating islands in Cambodia, I thought these islands would be similar: floating rafts anchored to the lake bottom. Uros was completely different. The island people wait until the end of the rainy season for chunks of reed roots to float to the top of the water, and they anchor these roots together and lay reeds across them to make a sort of floor. Walking on the reed ground is quite squishy, and at first I was convinced that I would fall through and be trapped in the lake. It's actually pretty sturdy, though, and nobody fell through. :) It's amazing to realize that an entire community lives this way, making their houses entirely out of reeds, navigating around in reed boats-- there is even a floating school for the younger children. We took a giant reed boat (very reminiscent of a Viking ship, except with the head of a puma/snake/llama and tail of a fish) to another island in the area after the island people sang us a farewell song in Aymara (the main indigenous language here), Spanish, and English. It was a cute day and so much fun!

After Uros, however, we were desperate to get out of Puno, so we took an afternoon bus into Bolivia...

Copacabana
Crossing the border into Bolivia was kind of fun. Our bus took us to the Peruvian side, where we had to get out and walk to the immigration office up the road. After getting our passports stamped, we then had to walk up the road even more to cross into Bolivia. Once there, we went to their immigration office, where the official basically gives you a stamp for however long you say you want (30 days or 90 days). Everyone was quite pleasant, and it was surprisingly hassle-free. We had heard rumors that guards sometimes try to charge you a phony "entrance tax" or demand to search your bags (and then steal valuables), but there was absolutely none of that. Afterwards we hopped back on the bus to Copacabana, a small town on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca.

Traveling by bus: beautiful. Honestly, I think it's the only way to go unless you need to get somewhere far away very quickly. The drive into Bolivia was absolutely beautiful. The deep turquoise waters of Lake Titicaca looked breathtaking in the sunlight and looks like it could stretch on forever. My dad told us (and our Uros guide said this as well)that the Bolivians like to say that the "Titi" part of the lake is in Bolivia, and the "caca" side of the lake is in Peru! For those who don't speak Spanish, "caca" means "shit." Quite blunt, no? I don't know if I will go so far as to entirely agree with that statement, but the Copacabana part of Lake Titicaca puts the Puno side to absolute shame.

Copacabana has all the makings of a sleepy beach town (except for the lack of beach). Everyone is friendly and relaxed, and the fact that the lake is so amazing just makes you feel happy to be there. Copacabana has some very beautiful parts, most notably the Cathedral. The Moorish architecture is so different from anything we have seen so far. Every day (especially on Sundays), motorists park their vehicles in front of the Cathedral to have it blessed. Vendors in front of the Cathedral sells bottles of wine, beer and champage-- not so much to be used for personal consumption, but for the motorists to splash all over the vehicles and the ground (to Pacha Mama, or Mother Earth). There are also priests with buckets of holy water and old women with burning cauldrons of incense. The sight is amazing to watch, as it is taken so seriously. You can even buy a miniature car or house from the vendors and have that blessed. Afterwards, people can climb up a mountain (Cerro Calvario) overlooking the harbor and find a shaman who will bless them even more. Though we didn't get blessed by the shaman, Eben and I did walk up the mountain to take in the views. Despite a disturbing amount of trash (apparently littering is a huge problem here) along the way, it's incredible. There are stone cabinet-like things on the top for people to place white burning candles, and a series of stone crosses casts an almost eerie shadow on the ground.

My favorite part about Copacabana, though, is a small candle chapel off the side of the main Cathedral. At first it feels as though you have mistakenly wandered into a sewer or underground squatter's zone, as the walls are completely black, there is little light, and a few beggars are gathered around the entryway. Once you make it through, however, you see dozens of flickering white candles that have been placed on stone slabs in the middle of the room and along the walls. It is such a simple sight, but overwhelmingly beautiful at the same time. The walls are black, save for some candle wax graffiti (interesting). The air feels so warm from the lit candles, and I personally felt like I could stand there for hours holding a candle in silent meditation. There's something so basic about candles, like candlelight vigils, that is very touching and powerful. The chapel was like a big vigil for humanity. That's the best way I can think of to describe it.

Aside from my newfound love for candles (yay!), Eben and I strapped on our adventure boots once more for some trekking on La Isla Del Sol, the origin of the Inca creation myth. We took a painfully slow ferry across Lake Titicaca for 2 hours until we reached the northern end of the island. Happy to finally be on land, we quickly hiked up to the northern tip, past the Sacred Rock where the first Inca supposedly rose from the water, up to a nice lookout point. The ground was covered in rock towers (shrines to Apu, the god of the mountains), so we unpacked our amazing picnic lunch, made our own Apu monument, and soaked up the sunshine.

(Warning: SPF 30 is not strong enough for South America.)

Desipte numerous applications of sunblock, my poor little shoulders suffered a bit throughout the day. We trekked for 3 hours to the southern end of the island, the trail at times a bit rough. The altitude is killer. We were very exposed (on a dry island with practically no trees, the sun will find you and abuse you), but at least it gave us a great unblocked view of the water! :) Along the way we befriended a British girl our age, Ellie, who I swear seemed totally unaffected by the (a) altutide, (b) heat, (c) terrain. All of the above? I'm jealous. Anyway, Isla Del Sol was gorgeous.

Random: Our first night in Copa, we ran into a Vassar guy (Jackson) who played soccer with Eben and is now JYA in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Weird! This proves my theory that (a) the world is actually the size of my flip-flop, and (b) Vassar people are everywhere. We had a good laugh over running into each other and hung out later that night with him and another guy from his JYA program. It was good company, and we learned how to play a Bolivian dice game. I have no idea what it is called, or really what the rules were, but Eben and I won, so that's all that matters. :)