I am currently in La Paz, Bolivia. It has been a very eventful last week and a half since my last post. Well I spent a couple of day in Lima, I have to admit that I was not all that impressed by the city. I made my way to Cuzco, Peru which is home to all the famous ruins of the Incas. For three days I visited various ruins ending in the pinnacle of seeing Machu Picchu. Even with all the hype, it stands up to impress. I did some serious mountain hiking as well, climbing a 700 meter mountain and a 650 meter one the following day. Both of these mountains surrounded Machu Picchu which gave a great birdseye view of the ruins. This was one of my major things to do on this trip, like Christmas as a kid, it passes too quickly. The next trip was to visit Lake Titicaca, the largest lake in South America. On the Peruvian side is Puno. The most interesting thing about Puno are the people who live on floating islands. They are made out of boyant reeds, in fact everything that is on the island is made of reeds, such as the houses, boats, watch towers ground etc. It was certainly unique.
Making my way into Bolivia was an experience. In my travel book it says that entrance visas are free, well this changed 4 months ago and is now 135 dollars, among having a list of things to complete before you enter. I had to bribe the official to overlook my unpreparedness. Our president strikes again in pissing off yet another country, so it´s citizens have to pay for it. In fact U.S. citizens are the only country that have to pay anything to enter Bolivia. I have to say that when I was told this I was embarrassed, we are really not held in very good reguards around the world.
In Bolivia I began in a town called Copacabana which has majestic views of lake Titicaca. I did run into problems originally since the town does not have ATMs. I was down to my last 2 dollars in cash when I was able to have a bank give me an advance on a debit card, I was seriously concerned that I would be in deep doodoo on that one, but disaster averted. All is well and I have been pretty healthy. Until next time
