Lake Titicaca: The Peruvian Side

We last left you (other than the stolen stuff update) at Machu Picchu. From there, we went to Puno, which is the main Peruvian city on Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca (most often spelled Titikaca or Titikaka here so as not to be associated with caca) is the highest navigable lake in the world. Not the highest lake, just the highest lake on which you can float really big boats. The Lake is about half owned by Peru and half by Bolivia. We went to visit islands in both halves. Unfortunately, a thief has seen to it that you will not see pictures of Isla del Sol on the Bolivian side. In fairness, the Peru side is way better, so you aren't missing much. Now, to the pictures:

Here is a typical Southern Peru landscape as we rode on the bus from Cusco to Puno. We were really high--about 12,000 feet on average. One flight of stairs and we are exhausted.

They have very scary manequins in Peru. It is hard to see in this picture, but this guy actually has some gold caps on his teeth. The scary manequins seem to be widespread.

From Puno, we sailed to Los Uros, also known as the float islands. Some feel that these islands are over touristy, and they have lots of tourism, but they are really cool. 800 years ago, the natives ran away from the Incas coming to conquer them by sailing into Lake Titicaca on boats built of the reeds that grow everywhere. Over time, these boats got bigger and bigger until they just built whole islands. The base is made of a meter of reed roots and then they pile a meter of dry reeds on top of that and if floats like a little dock. They must constantly renew these parts since they start to sink when they decompose. In addition, they build everything out of these reeds. Here is one of their homes:

Here is a view from one island to another. Sometimes people become friends with the island next to them, so they merge islands. Sometimes they have arguments on an island which result in them taking a saw and cutting the island into two new islands.

While on the islands, we rode in one of their reed boats. It doesn't look very solid, but it carried 25 people and felt very sturdy. It is just bundles of dry reeds tied together. The people who live there definitely get dressed up for the tourists, but the standard dress is essentially the same--maybe just not as clean. They showed us the insides of their houses, which are the size of a small shed, so we got to see just about everything they own.

This is a shot looking down over the edge of the island. You can see how it is constructed with the base layer and then tons of reeds on top of it.

They have trained cormorants to fish for them. (But not the extra egret in this picture.) They still fish a lot themselves, but the birds help. Most of the native fish in Lake Titicaca are very small, so they have to catch a lot. They also grow some in little lagoons in the floating islands. They are now having problems with invasive species, mostly trout, killing all the native fish.

Here are the islanders saying goodbye. They are mostly women because the men are out fishing or in some cases are just too shy to see the tourists.

After the floating islands, we went to a real island called Taquile, named after some Spanish guy. This island was controlled by the Incas, though I would guess that the people living there did not go by choice. It is far from everything, and only a couple things like potatoes and some types of corn will grow on the island. For six months of the year it rains nonstop. However, we were there during the dry season and it was beautiful.

Also, I didn't manage to get any pictures, but if you are in a position of authority on Taquile, say the mayor of the village, you wear this incredibly silly looking rainbow colored hat with earflaps and balls dangling from it. Really makes me want to move there just for the hat.

Okay, that does it for our first foray into Peru. Up next will be Bolivia.

The Day the Honeymoon Ended

I am very sad to have to write this blog post, but for the sake of full disclosure of the good and bad on this trip, here goes...a very, very horrible person stole one of our bags at the bus station here in La Paz, Bolivia, yesterday.

In addition to the material stuff we lost, unfortunately our passports happened to be in that one bag, so we are stuck here in La Paz for an additional 2-3 days while we wait for the US Embassy to reopen (silly Sunday, silly Columbus Day!) so we can get new passports. (We are not sure yet what happens regarding our Bolivian visas, which we bought at the border for $135 apiece and are now also gone...we are hoping that we don´t have to buy them again.)

What happened? We were about to board the bus for Rurrenabaque (about 18 hours north of here) and were standing in an enclosed area by the buses within two feet of all of our stuff...it may have happened when we turned our backs to look at the bus, or may have been when someone was trying to talk to us, but we turned around and Andy´s smaller bag was gone.

We shouted for help, we talked to the bus agents and a local policeman, we canvassed the neighborhood ourselves, but the bag was gone without a trace. We do have travel insurance and have already started working on our claim, so luckily we should get reimbursed monetarily for the stuff that was taken...but there are a few things that cannot be replaced, like Andy´s journal, and that breaks our hearts a bit.

We were very, very angry and upset all day yesterday, a state of mind that was not helped at all by the closed embassy and totally useless tourist police, who are also "closed" on the weekends and told us to come back today to file our report. Oh, and to be more careful with our stuff, because apparently unless you store your bags up your butt here they are fair game for any thief.

Sorry, sorry. Fifth graders, you didn´t read that last part.

Yeah, so, the police here are a total joke. We went back this morning to file our report, and Andy practically had to restrain me from hitting one cop who told us that we had to give him money with which to make better copies of our backup passport copies. I told him that we weren´t giving him any money for any reason (all this in Spanish, mind you), and we marched down the street and made the copies ourselves. The only reason we went through with filing the report is that we need copies of it for the embassy and for the insurance company. We know that there´s not going to be any sort of proper investigation.

So, we wandered around La Paz yesterday feeling angry and resentful, and started to replace items that had been taken, a task we continued today while feeling slightly less acutely angry (time is helping). Other than the journal, our biggest loss was one of our cameras, the good one with the super zoom and the only expensive piece of electronics equipment we dared to bring on this trip. Because he is smart, Andy backs up our pictures frequently, so we only lost a couple of days worth of pictures (and they were all pictures from Bolivia, a country we now don´t like all that much, so we´re not so sad about that). We have a secondary camera that we´ll use for a while until we can find a good replacement (we looked around the electronics district in La Paz this afternoon, but weren´t happy with any of the options).

If there is a bright side of all of this, it is that we were never hurt or threatened...we never even glimpsed the person who stole our stuff. And we do have insurance, so our replacement purchases will be covered eventually. We are just depressed about the irreplaceable stuff and the hassles we now have to undertake, and not thrilled to be stuck for several days in the city where this happened instead of out in the jungle petting capybaras.

You may be wondering about the title of this post. Andy and I have debated at times for how many months into this trip we can really go on saying that we´re on our honeymoon. So, yesterday, when we were sharing macabre quips about the morning´s experiences, I joked, "Well, it´s official now, the honeymoon is over."

But even if it is, that´s OK. Yesterday was really the first big trial we have faced since we got married, and I think we did a really good job of leaning on each other and helping each other through it. Bolivia may be sucky at the moment, but the Dairhills will persevere! Now excuse me while I swallow my valuables for the walk back to our hotel.

Why the Incas are Cool!

As we headed north from Santiago, the rest of Chile can be summarized in this picture. It is all desert, all the time. Not desert like in the American Southwest, where it is sort of sandy and not much grows, but desert where absolutely nothing seems to exist. This is the Atacama, the driest desert on Earth.
Once we made it across the border from Chile to Peru, the change in the way things are done was dramatic. When we went to board the bus, they had us put our luggage on a cart. Then some other people put their luggage on the cart. Their luggage happened to be a lamb.

Our first stop in Peru was Cusco, land of the Incas. For the next couple days, we explored the Sacred Valley of the Incas and Machupicchu. This is a picture of the agriculture terraces of the Incan village of Pisac. They used these as a laboratory, with each level having a different temperature and climate. They could slowly get plants to grow at higher altitudes or with different amounts of water. Really interesting stuff for those of you who are nerdy science people like me.

The main church in Cusco was built on the base of Incan ruins. A lovely church outside. Can't tell you about the inside because they charge the astronomical sum of $10 to go in. Seriously, $10 to see a church? Ludicrous. I might write the pope to complain.

The Incans used two types of stone work. This is the more famous, sometimes called Imperial. It is crazy. As our guide said, they had three tools: a bronze chisel, a hammer, and patience. They slowly hammered pieces to exactly fit one another. No concrete or anything else between the stones.

Even before the Incas, the native people had amazing building skills. In Ollaytaytambo (try saying that three times fast--or even once), the pre-Incas spent 200 years building the sun temple, which still wasn't done when the Incas conquered them in the 1400s. They dragged these 60 ton stones about 8 miles over a couple of mountains before polishing them to exactly fit each other. Oh, and those small stones inbetween the big ones are spacers for earthquakes. So, 800 years ago these people built earthquake proof buildings. Only took us about 750 years to catch up.

Most everyone of Incan descent puts a little topper on their house for good luck. Most of them relate to agriculture, like these cute bulls.

We met our friend Sabrina in Cusco. Sabrina is the only friend good enough to take us up on our offer of meeting us on our travels. Here are the three of us. It was good to travel with someone else. Not that I ever get sick of Tara, but it is always nice to talk to someone else.

In Machupicchu, they have llamas. Cheaper than lawnmowers. Here are some through the ruins.

This was sunrise in the Temple of the Sun at Machupicchu. You have to arrive early, climb to the temple, and then sneak over the gates that say do not enter when the guards aren't looking to get this picture. On the solstices, the sun rises through the two windows. Because we are between them, it rises between the windows.

Here you can see how people lived. These are mostly houses, which would have had thatched leaf roofs. They are divided into chambers that would have certainly been close quarters, but you can't beat the views.

We learned that Incan architecture is easy to identify because they build trapezoid windows. This window had a particularly good view of Tara out it.

This is the main square of Macchupicchu. Only residents of the city generally would have been allowed here (no visitors). The buildings in the back are partly houses and partly the school. Everything is built on terraces on the mountain. It rains for about 6 months of the year, so everything stays very green. It also means that the terraces help stop the massive erosion.

This is a view of Machupicchu from Wayanupicchu, the mountain that towers over it. It gives you a sense of the mountain that these people climbed to get home everyday. Incas were in much better shape than Americans.

Here we are with Machupicchu city and Wayanpicchu Mountain in the back. I climbed Wayanpicchu, but Tara and Sabrina made the (probably wise) decision to do something less strenuous. Between that and hiking up the mountain to Machupicchu and down again, we were all exhausted by the end of the day.

That concludes our Machupicchu fun. We have lots more pictures, but I didn't want to bore you and our Internet time is coming to an end. Machupicchu was very heavy on the tourists and is about 10 times more expensive than anywhere else in Peru, but was definitely worth it. We did not hike the Inca trail (which is incredibly expensive and doesn't seem all that interesting), but we did plenty of hiking in the area.

Eat me: Chile

Chile is the California of South America, growing more food than just about anywhere. This means that while the country is expensive as a whole, much food (especially produce) is very cheap. In addition, they seem to take their cuisine seriously in Chile. Here is some of the food we found in Chile.

As I said, produce is cheap. Here is Tara buying kiwis in Southern Chile. They were 10 for 50 cents. We saw them even cheaper as we got closer to where they were grown. As Tara would say, they were almost free.

A popular flavor in Chile is chirimoya. It is a fruit that is sometimes called a custard apple. It is a little custardy, but not at all appley. In any case, we first had it in Hawaii, but they are much bigger in Chile and they use the flavor in a lot of things. Here is Tara with our discovery of chirimoya cookies.

They sell frozen vegetables by the pound in Chile. Tara loves anything sold by the pound. The selection was large even in smaller super markets: In Chile, we finally found something that was tres leches flavored. I love tres leches, but had not seen it anywhere else. When we found ice cream, I saw no choice but to buy a liter of it. In my kindness, I gave Tara a bite or two. Strangely, jam is sold in plastic bags rather jars in most of Chile. It also tends to be runnier. I poured the bag of peach jam that we bought into our old jam jar. Look at the concentration on my face.

While visiting Maribel and Jose in Temuco, we tried several things. We asked what these are called about five times and think it is something like calzone. They aren't at all like an Italian calzone, but more like fried dough. A good breakfast choice if you eat as much sugar and fried stuff as I do.

These are called tuna, like the fish, but don't taste fishy at all. They come from a cactus like a prickly pear, but aren't as sweet. No bad. Popular for dessert in Chile.

We mentioned the Completo Italiano in an earlier post, but they really are much better than the standard street vendor hot dog of America. A big hot dog on toasted bun with tomato, avocado, and mayo. All for $1. Also, note that Chile has yet another name for hot dogs. Who knew that the lowly hot dog could create so much confusion around a name?

In Chile, we found Churritos. The name implies that it is like a churro, but smaller. In fact, it is like a churro, but bigger. And not in the standard churro star shape. But still filled with dulce de leche, and still tasty.

The most famous drink of Chile is probably the pisco sour. It has some grape-based liqueur and lemon juice and I don't know what else because I don't drink. What I do know is that Tara had this wee glass of the stuff and I almost had to carry her home. Not sure if that says more about the drink or about Tara.

This picture is surprising because I let Tara hold my ice cream. Normally, I don't let anyone touch my ice cream. They had fun flavors of soft serve. These were a mix of strawberry and chirimoya.

The national sandwich of Chile is called the chacarero. It consists of a huge bun with meat (normally beef or chicken), tomato, greenbeans, peppers, mayonaise, and various condiments. Very big and very good.

We found these coconut candies that were a piece of coconut coated in sugary coconut stuff. Crunchy and tasty. As an added bonus, they were bright orange.

The most popular non-alcoholic "drink" in Chile is mote. Mote consists of a sugary tea with either corn or barley bits with a peach in it. They served this on our boat trip before we realized that it was a famous Chilean thing. Much to our benefit, everyone was too scared to drink theirs and I had about 5 of them. This is one in Santiago that was much higher quality. Strange, but not bad.

They really like peaches and the mote actually uses a re-hydrated peach. Look at the huge selection of dried peaches at the market. This was one of probably a dozen stalls just like it.

What would a country be without a new type of yogurt for Tara? Here she is trying her chirimoya yogurt, which she really liked.

Another popular street food in Chile is the sopapilla. It is a flat piece of fried dough onto which you add various hot sauces or condiments of your choice. Popular all day long and fried on the street. They normally cost about 20 cents. Here is Tara with hers and some hot sauce.

Maribel was nice enough to cook for us and did her best with some traditional Chilean dishes. Here was the tasty chicken on Chilean rice that she made us.

And here is a Chilean salad, which consists of tomatoes, onions, and cilantro. It was also very good.

We don't have any pictures, but Southern Chile also has terrific French fries everywhere on the street for very little money. We were really happy to be back in a land of french fries after passing through several countries where they were rare and expensive. Long live the potato!

And that concludes foods of Chile. I hope that you have enjoyed it and tune in for our next episode: Foods of Peru.

Santiago and the $100 challenge

A few weeks ago, we got an e-mail from a close friend saying that she was in touch with a fan of our blog who wished to become our anonymous "benefactor." We asked for more details, and here is the reply we received:

"Dear Andrew and Tara,

I here your trip around south america is going well. Sometimes I ask my housekeeper to put your computer sight on the tv monitor for me to read. I am not so handy with computers, but boy am I rich!

I have thought very hard about all the adventures in aouth smerica that I have heard about, but could not do myself for variuos reasons. (Gout, incarceration, ect.) But these ideas came to me so many years ago and I do not know if they are still posible. You must have a better lay on the land than I do.

I like the televesion program The Amazing Race. Do you? One time on that show I saw a challenge that I think you kids would enjoy. Too bad I don't have that guy Phil to give you the rules (isn't he a doll!) so I will ahve to do that here. I made it a little bit different since you don't have to compete with anyone and run around like crazy. Here is your challenge:

[Name deleted] will give you $100 US to spend in a Chilean city of your choice. The money must be spent in a period of 6 hours (any 6 hours you want), but you cannot buy any tangible goods to be used after the 6 hour period. No "stuff." Any money you do not spend in that 6 hour window you have to give back to [Name deleted], who will give it to me. And I don't want it back because I am so rich! Some specifick rules:

1. You can only spend $20 of the total $100 to upgrade the quality of your hotel (if you want to). If you spent $100 on a hotel, that would yield some pretty boring photos! I know you will stay at that hotel beyond the 6 hour window, but htat is okay.
2. You can buy food as long as you eat it within the 6 hour window.
3. Any kind of services or rentals are allowed, as long as they are legal. Or should be legal. Any thing you rent has to be given back by the end of the 6 hours though.
4. You can spend the money all in one place, or in many places. It is up to you.
5. You can't give the money away to anyone else, or pay for other people to do things, although you can leave generous tips for people who provide you services, according to local norms. If there eyes bug out at the tip, you have left too much and broken a rule.
6. There is no six.

Please take photographs of your adventures. I take joy in watching you do things that I cannot, sitting hear in this chair. If you want to put the phtos on your computer sight, that would be nice. I don't know how you kids do that. It looks liek magic to me! But in closing, please have fun. I don't want to look at pictures of you not having fun. I don't care if you tell people about this challenge, but don't put [Name deleted]'s name in their. She doesn't know that many people who are as rich as me and someone might figure eight who I am.

Have fun!!!!

Fondly,
The Benefactor

P.S. - I think it is strange that [Name deleted] calls me The Benefactor. I was going to call myself, "your special friend." But [Name deleted] said that has other meanings which are not so nice. I am so old!"

So, we decided to make Santiago, Chile's capital that city. This challenge turned out to be harder than we thought. How hard can it be to spend $100? Well, Santiago isn't the easiest place to do so as it turns out. We fell a bit shy of the total, spending only $95 by the end of the alloted time (what can we say--being cheap is just a part of life for us), but we had a great time trying. Here's how the day went:

First, we had to lay out the money. $100 US is 54,000 Chilean pesos. We felt rich.
So, you may wonder, what is the very first thing we splurged on? Laundry!!!! We had a lot of it.
Since we started our travels 3 months ago, we have only washed clothes in the sink, so paying someone to wash them for us in a machine with real detergent was a gift both for us and for the people who have to sit next to us on buses. At the laundromat, they weighed our clothes. The total charge: $8.
Next stop: New York street, just for nostalgic value. Cost: $0.

Also free was our climb up the Cerro Santa Lucia for views of Santiago. Those are not clouds in the background, but the snowy peaks of the Andes! We looked for ways to spend money all the way up, but couldn't find any.
No lighthouses allowed!
OK, next up was lunch. We sprung for two completos Italianos, which are tasty hot dogs (the completo) with tomatoes, avocado, and mayo. What makes these toppings Italiano, you ask? They are the colors of the Italian flag.

We also got two huge steins of fruit juice. Here you can see the kiwi-pear juice that Tara got. Apparently we forgot to take pictures of Andy's strawberry-pineapple.

The cost of our lunch was $5 total. This may not sound like much of a splurge, but if we hadn't been on the challenge, we would have shared one hot dog and one juice between us.

Yum, my own juice!
On to the market! They sell every food imaginable, but we didn't have much room left in our tummies. Our benefactor bought us 1/4 kilo (about 1/2 pound) of almendras confitadas, which are almonds coated in tasty red sugary stuff. We ate them within half an hour or so. This cost $2, but that is a lot more than the cheaper version, made with peanuts, which is what we would have bought on our own! Also, we probably wouldn't have bought quite so many...
Next stop was the Museo de Bellas Artes. This was the cultural part of our expenditures. The admission was actually a suggested donation of $1 apiece. On our own, we would have never paid this, but thanks to the benefactor, Chile's arts are now thriving. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to photograph the actual art, but here's the atrium. Total cost: $2.We then walked to one of Santiago's biggest parks and took the funicular up the Cerro San Cristobal to see the views and the giagantic statue of the Virgin Mary that towers over the city. What could be more fun than a fun-icular? Total cost: $6. (PS, Benefactor, Tara thanks you especially because without your support, Andy would have made her walk up the darn hill.)
There was a street musician playing flute and guitar at the same time near the funicular. He was pretty impressive. We never tip street musicians, but in the spirit of spending money, we gave him $1. He thanks the benefactor, but was too speedy for Tara to capture on film (you can see Andy's hand retreating across this photo after giving him the money).
Even better views of the Andes (which Tara kept messing up and calling the Alps) from the top of the hill!
The colossal Virgin Mary and her earthly representatives tried to convince us to donate the rest of the $100 to them, but we refused.
When we got down from the hill, we took what may be our first elective taxi ride of our entire trip. It was a long haul back to the hotel, and Tara was VERY happy because Andy never lets her take taxis. Cost of taxi ride: $5.After freshening up, we took another taxi ($6) to the Providencia neighborhood for a super-fancy dinner at a vegetarian restaurant called El Huerto. This dinner cost more than twice as much as any dinner we've had out on the whole trip! Luckily, it was delicious.We ordered drinks, something else we never usually do. Tara got a papaya juice and Andy got an awesome mint lemonade. Cost: $6.
Then we had an appetizer, another trip first. We went big for the sampler platter, which was filled with Mediterranean-style goodies. There was a mushroom pate, hummus (which we had not seen since Trinidad), and a tabouli salad. Also, olives, cheese, and pitas. Tara ate all the olives and cheese. Cost: $10. (We are cringing just writing that cost down!)
Andy's main dish was a melange of Indian-style stuff. Some components were a vegetable curry, a bean curry, and a tasty fruit chutney. Every bite was delicious. Cost: $11.50.
Tara continued with the appetizer's Mediterranean theme. Her dish included a delicious latke (fried potato pancake), an avocado hummus, a carrot and cranberry salad, tabouli, and a Greek-style spinach pie in phyllo dough. Yum. Cost: $11.50.
Dessert! Tara got a praline mousse with passionfruit jelly on top. It was unusual and delicious. Cost: $5.
Andy went for the traditional apple crisp with ice cream. It wasn't quite as good as Tara's dessert. But not bad, how could it be, it was apple crisp! Cost: $5. Dinner total with tip: $54.
(To those of you who live in New York, that may not sound like a very expensive dinner, and I would say that it was well up to NY standards! But for us, on this trip, it was quite pricey. Luckily, we were not paying!)

Taxi back to the hotel cost another $6. We had planned to take the leftover money and hit one of the nearby casinos and get some ice cream, but by the time we returned from dinner, everything in Santiago seemed to be closed. Plus, we were tired, so we must forfeit the remaining $.

Many, many thanks to our anonymous benefactor for her generosity. We had a terrific time trying to spend your money, and hope you enjoyed the pictures.

We leave you with a picture of our clean laundry, which we picked up the next morning, neatly-folded and fresh-smelling--a wonderful souvenir of our $100 challenge.
P.S. This post was written jointly by Andy and Tara.