Day 43 - Tues 10.05.10
WE GO TO SEE POTOSÍ

Today we set out for lovely Potisí, known for its breathtaking colonial architecture, being the highest populated city in the world (a whopping 4,090 meters above sea level), and having once been the richest city in the Americas due to its incredibly prolific silver mines (which prompted a city to be founded at such a ridiculous altitude to begin with).

Apparently, the Potosi silver industry practically single-handedly financed the Spanish empire between the mid-1500´s and 1800´s, until the source, Cerro Rico, began to run dry. Locals continue to mine in small, miner-run co-ops at their own expense, but profits and lucky strikes are few and far between. Guided tours of the mines are offered by some agencies, mainly as a way to see first-hand the atrocious (and, in most cases, eventually lethal) working conditions that remain the legacy of colonial slave labor, but we opted out of it (see yesterday´s post). Also, we´d rather not contract silicosis, thankyouverymuch.

But before we got to the city itself, we experienced our first case of real travellers´ paranoia. We hopped in a cab at the bus station and gave the driver our destination, but instead of going downhill into what we thought was the city center, he turned up and into the surrounding hills. About 15 minutes into what was supposed to be a 5 minute ride, we began to wonder where we were going. The driver seemed to ignore our questions, or at best answer in vague references to another neighborhood somewhere over the hill. The streets seemed to get more and more deserted and we finally got worried. We began to stuff our wallets into our underwear, and Joseph even got out his pocket knife [Joseph´s note: it is a hunting/camping knife]. What harm could a lanky Jewish boy from Charleston, SC, possibly do with a pathetic little pocket knife, you ask? So did he. [Joseph´s note: again, hunting/camping knife, and it´s quite sharp]

Eventually, and just as the driver had said, we began to re-enter civilization and soon found ourselves in downtown Potosí, safe and sound. Joseph put away the blade. It appears that the bus terminal was moved to a new building outside the city, and was no longer a few blocks from the center, as it was in March of this year, when our guidebook was published.

The driver never knew it, but the hefty tip he received was our manner of apology for wrongfully thinking he was an ax murderer. Sorry dude.

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Day 42 - Mon 10.04.10
MY FIRST DAY AT WORK

Shirking off other potential responsibilities, Joseph, accompanied as always by his trusty sidekick, enjoy the good life in Sucre. By ¨good life in Sucre¨ we mean being in Sucre on a day when anything at all is open.

We were first captivated by the lure of the Museum of Human Anatomy. Imagine a large room filled with a mix of wax body parts and organs, larger-than-life diagrams, an array of human bones, and some very unhappy looking ex-organs floating in formaldehyde. We were especially taken with the dignified portraits of Sucre´s old school medical establishment and the museum´s large display of turn-of-the-century medical tools.

Next up: dinosaurs. Opting out of the touristy ¨Dino Bus,¨ we instead hopped on combi (bus) #4, rode it 30 minutes to the end of the line, and walked up the hill to the hilariously awesome Parque Cretacico. Long story short, workers excavating at a Bolivian quarry stumbled upon a bunch of dinosaur footprints some 20 years ago, and there´s now a dinosaur theme park to accompany the viewing of the footprints. Mind you, this is no ordinary mishmash of dinosaur footprints, but it is rather the largest number of dinosaur footprints of any site worldwide (some several thousand). Furthermore, what was once a muddy horizontal surface is now a completely vertical wall, courtesy of insane geologic forces, so that the footprints are suspended sideways hundreds of feet up on an enormous vertical cliff. From the park you look across the quarry up at the the kilometer-long cliff and can follow tracks for hundreds of meters up and down the now-vertical surface. Quite imposing. We appreciated the life size dinosaur models inside the Parque Cretacico, but we did find that the looped soundtrack of dinosaur grunts being blasted throughout the park made it somewhat difficult to hear our guide.


Back in the city later on, we paid a sundown visit to Monasterio San Felipe Neri. New rule for the trip: visit monasteries whenever possible. The tour took us up the to the roof of the monastery, where beautiful tile construction covers every structure, including the cathedral. (Have you ever walked on top of a cathedral before?) The views of the brilliant-white colonial city at sunset inspired much awwww. Our tour guide liked us so much that she also took us into the crypt.

Night time: a local not-for-locals restaurant was showing The Devil´s Miner, a documentary about a young boy working in the mines of nearby Potosí. As we were heading to Potosí the next day, we were lucky to catch the film before going. The documentary highlighted the horrific working conditions in the 450-year old mines, the sad economic situation that forces the folks of Potosí into a life of mining, and the painful lung diseases that follows, in most cases killing them. The film also convinced us to not attempt a visit to the mines, which surprisingly is a popular tourist activity we{d been hearing about from other travellers for weeks. For a brief moment, we were forced to reflect on the purpose of our largely self-indulgent, self-obsessed, and entertainment-seeking vacation, and we decided to pass up on what we thought would be a voyeristic and even dangerous foray into the mines. Of course, we also acknowledge fully that in rushing through without stopping to learn about such a significant part of local life, we consciously chose to avoid exposure to an upsetting reality. We felt, and still feel, somewhat conflicted about the whole thing.

And it was evening, and it was morning, the umpteenth day.

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Day 41 - Sun 10.03.10
I KNOW LES LUTHIERS, AND YOU, SIRS, ARE NO LES LUTHIERS

So it turns out that everything is closed in Sucre, Bolivia on a Sunday. It being difficult to find much of anything to occupy ourselves, we instead let ourselves get interviewed by a Unitedstatesofamerican grad student researching... travellers masking their cultural identities in Bolivia. Joseph revealed that he usually lets Victoria speak for him, and that he was wearing a Roots vest (Canadian brand, mind you). Ergo, nobody will ever know he is Unitedstatesofamerican.

The afternoon centered around plans to rent go-carts at the massive fair going on in Sucre´s lovely city park. Our dreams were shattered, however, when we were informed that we were too big to ride the go-carts and that they were solely to be used for the entertainment of children. Efforts to temporarily kidnap a Bolivian child were unavailing.

In honor of our anniversary -- 3rd... or 4th... or 8th or something -- we opted to sample Sucre´s finest cultural offerings by attending the theatre. Sucre´s performance space is a lovely opera house type affair, very impressive building, very old school, very stylish. Approaching the ticket booth that afternoon, we were informed that a popular Bolivian comedy troupe was performing that evening. We were promised that the show would involve a little bit of music, a lot of humor, but ¨no politics, nothing controversial.¨ Not exactly Puccini at the Met, but, then again, we didn´t really have the right clothes anyway. Somewhat skeptical of the rainbow-&-balloon designs on the billboard, Victoria asked if the show wasn´t really meant for children. The ticket seller promised that it was not solely for children, and that it was actually very much in the style of the lofty literary humor of Les Luthiers. Some of you may know of Les Luthiers, the famous Argentine group known for its comedic musical satire, whitty puns, and homemade instruments. This statement made us feel a bit more optimistic about the show. Victoria´s dear old Papa also happened to have been one of the original founding members of said group, so this reference seemed doubly reassuring.

Well... neither of us have ever walked out of any show before. We don´t give up easily. We´ll sit though an Eddie Murphy movie just to feel like we´re not quitters. The first tip off should have been that the ticket man who sold us on the show also seemed to be the ticket-taker, sound man, stage director, and emcee. Bad sign. In Unitedstatesofamerican parlance, it was all a bit ¨ghetto.¨ The second tip off was that the average audience member was a very unhappy-looking 5 year old. The third tip off was that the show absolutely sucked. We will spare you the details, but suffice it to say that we left at intermission. There goes our track record.

DAY 40 - SAT 10.2.10
JUST WHEN THEY`D GIVEN UP ALL SOAP, AGAINST ALL SUDS, THE TIDE TURNS: A MIRACLE

Since buses to Sucre are remarkably hard to come by for some reason, the happy couple finds themselves with an extra day to occupy in La Paz. Day 36 below details the peculiar charms of this city. Joseph and Victoria decide to keep their traps shut and enjoy themselves. Unfortunately, it seems that it`s pretty easy to become un-aclimated to the altidude, and an uncomfortable night is passed waking up grasping for the little oxygen that exists at 4000m.

An enjoyable duration of time is spent at La Paz´s modern art museum, housed in a gaping art deco mansion with arched glass ceilings (think German train station) and mirrored stairways. Even though this is by far the coolest thing in La Paz, the couple has the entire museum to themselves. They walk around accidentally using the flash and scoffing at artists who use sci-fi themes in their art.

The big excitement of the day is still to come.... Due to Joseph´s indignant refusal to pay variable rates for laundry services, Victoria had unwittingly agreed to drop off their collection of very dirty clothes not at the hotel`s laundry desk but at a dubious joint around the corner offering services for a lower price. As Joseph and Victoria have spent 135 Bolivianos (20 bucks) each on bus tickets for 7:30, they extract a promise from the old woman clerk to have the clothes by 6:00 pm. She states that they close for the evening around that time anyway. They ignore the fact that they see no washing machines at the storefront.

So, how could the clothes NOT be ready by 6:00? Why should the happy couple not be able to simply grab their clothes at the stated time and book it to the bus station. Why would the clothes be driven to a different part of the city to be washed? Why would there be any delay in the clothes coming back? What chance would there be that the dryer would break and the day´s labor would be backed up by 90 minutes? How likely would it really be that NO ONE would be at the desk when they returned at 6:00? What would prevent the laundry dude on the phone from being there in 15 minutes, as promised? Why would he thereafter not pick up his phone at all? And, above all else, why would this night, from precisely 6:00pm to 7:30pm, be the time of a massive cultural PARADE with hordes of masked men and dancing decorated women, marching in choreography slowly around the block of the laundry kiosk to the music of 30 person marching bands, slowly snaking their way through the crowded streets lined with people barbecuing on the sidewalks? Why would such a parade, with its thousands of marchers and thousands of attendees, cause any delay in the traffic? Why would this prevent the soggy, already-late clothes from arriving by 6:00pm as promised? Why would this instead cause the guy to show up with the clothes at 7:29? Why would the cab driver then need to take a detour in the OPPOSITE direction to get around aforementioned parade to get to the bus station that was 5 blocks away?

Would this happen? We don´t know. But one thing is for sure. As Joseph and Victoria sprinted away from the laundry shop with their soggy clothing to frantically hail a cab, the hand of God reached down from a cloud (not that far down, given La Paz`s extreme altitude), grabbed the laundry dude by the neck, squeezed his windpipe, and compelled him to take out his celphone and dial the number of the bus company which the unhappy couple had scribbled on a piece of paper and stuffed in his hand as they fled.

S...o...m...e...h...o...w... the bus had waited for them. A true miracle. At the bus station they were ushered through the luggage chute and directly into the bus parking lot... avoiding the $1.50 terminal tax!!!! They saved money!! Joseph apologized for having cursed so much. End of story.

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Day 37, 38 and 39 - Wed, Thur and Fri 9.29, 9.30 and 10.1.10
BUNGALOW IN THE JUNGLE

Today, our fearless travellers set out into the Amazon. Actually, first they set out on a taxi at 4:30am, then they waited in the La Paz airport because their plane was delayed a few hours due to it being ¨smoky season¨ in the Bolivian jungle. It is apparently ¨hot¨ this time of year in the jungle, and temperatures are so high that plants would prefer to literally burst into flames than bear it any longer. Said suicidal behavior affects navigational visibility -- pilots cannot see the ground at their destination and understandably choose not to takeoff, hence the delays.

But before they had a chance to dwell on the extreme heat that awaited us, Joseph and Victoria were forced to ponder a more imminent source of concern: the size and general functionality of our plane. The cozy little 18-seater ressembled a mini-van more than it did an aircraft. Nonetheless, it somehow got the job done, ascending up and over the nearby mountain-range for the first 20min (it was a close call... Joseph had his money on the mountains for a while), and then performing a turbulent and panic-inducing descent for the remaining 20min to Rurrenabaque, our smokey jungle destination. Change in elevation: a mere 10,000 feet. And fyi, the bus ride would have taken 22 hours.

The pair found their hosts in the town of Rurrenabaque, which was a humid and pleasant little town on the banks of the Limpopo River. Or is it the Volga. I can never remember. They were introduced to the man that would be their father and personal jungle-Jesus over the next 3 days, Demetrio. Demetrio, to put it bluntly, is a badass. Very small dude from the nearby village of San Miguel del Bala, sports a sweet moustache, knows everything there is to know about the jungle, never seen without his shoulder bag... and his daughters always win the Palo Encebado competition. Excuse me, you ask? Read on.

Transport in this overgrown region is done exclusively on the good lord`s original superhighway: the river. Preferred mode of transport: huge wooden canoes with Johnson outboards strapped to the back. Victoria and Joseph, along with the miniscule badass Demetrio, are shuttled upstream by Sandro, the young man in charge of the fine establishment where they are headed. Long story short, the 300 person community of San Miguel del Bala (hereinafter, "SMdB") realized that they could preserve their forest, keep their kids from running away to cities, maintain their traditional ways of life, and make a few bucks in the process if they built a stunningly beautiful ecolodge in the jungle near their town. Victoria and Joseph are in awe of these people. For 2 nights they were housed in expertly constructed bamboo, thatched wood, and stone structures; fed local delicacies and fresh donuts (in the jungle?? how?); led through overgrown trails in Parque Madidi to spy on capucin monkeys, parrots, and wild pigs; carted upstream through steep ramps of whitewater on the un-steerable wooden canoes; and generally given the time of their lives. A few details about the 3 days:

-- It was humid in the jungle.



-- Demetrio demonstrated for us a number of different techniques for constructing trampas (traps) for animals. You`ve heard of this stuff in books. If you ever find yourself with an omniscient jungle native nearby, ask him to show you. It`s amazing. Springing noose rope traps, lots of big heavy boards crushing animals, and -- I swear to you-know-who -- a trap that shoots an arrow from a bow at an animal that crosses in front of it. Jungle = so hot right now.

-- We pressed our own sugarcane juice in a huge wooden mill. Joseph, in the place of usual donkey, did most of the pushing. Victoria did most of the criticizing. Then we mixed it with lime and drank it. Real good.

-- The elementary school at SMdB has satellite internet and some real life wooden stocks. The bad kids get their feet put in the stocks. We are not joking.

-- Palo Encebado. What, you ask, is that? Well, every year on SMdB`s anniversary (and we happened upon its 200th!) the townsfolk knock down a long, straight tree, remove all the branches, grease it up real good with cow lard, tie a bunch of cash and candy and bottles of Fanta to the top, erect said grease-and-prize-laden pole to an upright and locked position, and then let their kids try to climb up to grab the prizes. Victoria and Joseph sat and watched in awe. After 3 or 4 boys tried to use the cover-it-with-dirt method, the daughter of... who else... Demetrio easily scaled the slippery 40 foot pole and methodically dropped each prize to her brothers` waiting fireman`s parachute below. Girls rule.

-- We snuck up on some wild monkeys in the jungle. This is a very difficult thing to do. We caught a glimpse of some of the little beasts through the dense forest cover, miraculously leaping between treetops. Our 40 minutes and waiting and listening for shaking branch noises and the 5 seconds of views that we had beats any zoo, any day.

-- We were ushered into the middle of a herd of about 50 terrified wild pigs. Joseph was under the impression that they were sizable wild boars, and he thus tried to hide behind a tree. Justo, a local guide, laughed at Joseph and calmly informed him that the tree he was grabbing was poisonous. Victoria ran for the center of the herd with her camera. Wild pigs smell real bad. And they are very funny to watch when they`re running.

-- Night hike by the river to seek out some puma. We found 2 nesting birds and a lot of little caymans (mini-gators). We found no puma. Such was the result, even though we had dutifully participated in the traditional pregame ceremony of masticating a combination of coca leaves plus baking soda plus some manner of sweet tree root. The next morning, we were shown the tracks of the puma that had, in fact, been stalking us, no doubt wondering what these idiot Americans hope to find by frantically shining their flashlights everytime they hear a leaf fall from a tree.

-- Every jungle remedy goes as follows: you take some of this here bark/sap/root/leaf/nut/animal/whatever, boil it for an hour, drink it with un poco de azucar, and it makes you vomit an hour later. It cures ailments to your liver or stomach. Our theory: all of these remedies are poisonous, hence the vomiting. Though we respect jungle folk and their abilities to survive in this harsh climate, we still prefer to have our prescriptions called into a RiteAid.

-- River fish. Justo caught us a delicious bass, using as bait some live grubs that we saw him extract from a tree nut deep in the jungle. The fish was big. Our cook then proceeded to prepare the fish in 3 different methods. Pan cooked with a sauce (good), lightly cooked stuffed inside shoots of bamboo (better), and steamed inside enormous banana leaves (best).



-- There was an incident with a canyon. The canyon may have been incredibly small (about 3-4 feet wide), and may have had present the following animals that regularly feature in nightmares and horror movies: bats, scorpions, water snakes, and enormous freaking spiders. It´s ok, though. The scorpions won´t jump on you unless they´re scared. There was also a tree sloth that had, unfortunately, fallen into the canyon. Anyhoo, some 50 feet into this dark watery abyss, Victoria very graciously started to freak out when asked to walk across a family of spiders, each measuring about the size of ... oh... the biggest spider she had ever seen. Victoria´s refusal to walk by said spiders allowed Joseph to retain his manhood and return, past the ready-to-jump scorpions, out the way he had entered without having to start crying.


-- Upon landing again at La Paz airport, Joseph and Victoria debated which experience had been more terrifying: aforementioned canyon, or the return flight inside the van-sized airplane. There is no answer to this question.

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DAY 36 - TUES 9.28.10
ALL WE ARE SAYING IS GIVE LA PAZ A CHANCE

Highest capital city in the world, here we go. After having slogged through the somewhat repetitive character of Peruvian tourist destinations, Bolivia`s urban hub offered a very appealing mix of bustle, randomness, and unique cultural feel. Though there are plenty of tourists in the mix, we frequently found ourselves the only foreigners on a city block or in a museum. Perhaps not a bad place to live, one might argue.

The day centered around visits to the Calle Jaen museums and a long downhill walk through the city center. The museums included a pretty nifty presentation of precious Inca metals - some displayed on slowly revolving mannequin torsos - and a collection of local textiles and scary looking dance masks. The last museum was the colonial era house of one Señor Murillo, who met his fate at the hands of the Spanish after leading an almost-succesful revolt in the early 1800s. We enjoyed thoroughly the well-preserved building and beautiful colonial style, but once again we were baffled by the curating... "say, let`s just throw a bunch of old furniture, books, and paintings in here with no explanation whatsoever as to its origin or significance, and then we`ll put a clueless and sleepy military guard at the entrance who can`t answer anybody`s questions." Thanks, Bolivia.

One other thing: people here don`t seem to understand walking for leisure. When we asked the owner of our coffee shop for the best walking tour route down through the city, she suggested we take a taxi to a lookout instead. When we insisted on wanting to see sights within the city, she told us where we could catch the bus. When we asked whether the huge park in the middle of the city was worth walking through, she suggested we take a taxi past it.

Needless to say, we walked... down the hill, through the beautiful city squares, past the countless rotund women selling jello with whipped cream in plastic cups, past the laughably slack "changing of the guard" at the presidential/government palace (wave to Evo), past the lawyer neighborhood, past the copy machine neighborhood, through aforementioned city park, and back up again to the Prado (main street) near the Plaza de Estudiantes. And oh, how many estudiantes there were. As we sat and ate our lunch and then, of course, our ice cream, we were entertained by the streams of Bolivian schoolkids on their mid-day lunch break. Great views of the tardy kids sprinting down the street trying to avoid whatever punishment lay in store for them. (Hey, they use stocks in some schools here, as we were to learn tomorrow... no joke).

Anyway, we walked some more, we returned to our old haunt from dinner the previous night, and we mentally prepared ourselves to descend into the nether regions of the Bolivian Amazon... mañana.

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Day 35 - Mon 9.27.10
THE MARKET OF REQUIREMENT

Today we took a bus bound for La Paz. Several hours, many winding roads, a ferry ride for the bus, a boat ride for us, then more winding roads later, we arrived in an enormous valley where the city seems to be rising up and boiling over the sides of the mountain range. It´s a really incredible place, and totally different from anywhere we´ve been so far.

We checked in and promptly found a laughably cheap (B15 = $2) Cuban lunch, which included the thickest, most delicious espresso we´ve had in months. (editor´s note: there was a lot of sugar in the espresso.) Also, and as a direct result of Victoria´s keen investigative research, it is necessary to make some remarks about the bathroom situation at said establishment.

But first, some clarification.

Thus far, the condition of ¨sanitary¨ facilities in both Peru and Bolivia has left much to be desired. However, what is most astounding to us travelers is that, no matter how nice a place is or how high its caliber of service, the bathrooms have been, without exception, woefully underwhelming. Shall we make a list of features that most people consider essential in the making of a fully satisfying powder-room experience? Yes, let´s.

1. A door (i.e., the inalienable right to keep your private bits... well... private).

2. A toilet.
3. A seat on said toilet.
4. The freedom to bid soiled paper a watery adieu, rather than placing it in a trash can.
5. Um... paper?
6. Soap.
7. Running water.
8. Some sort of of hand-drying plan.
9. A mirror would be nice.
10. Oh yeah - paper?

Sadly, most of these features have been conspicuously absent from our trip... that is, UNTIL we set foot in the magical Cuban restaurant in downtown La Paz, where every factor on the checklist proved to be present! For the first time in five odorous weeks, we found a john that was given the proper respect it deserves. (note: Joseph claims that a ¨hot water¨ is also an essential feature, but Victoria chooses to ignore him, as usual).

After a luxurious lunch, we went out to explore. We followed our ears and our noses towards a quaint-seeming street market, feeling lucky that we found some action, since the rest of the city seemed a little sleepy on a lazy Monday afternoon. It quickly became apparent that the rest of the city was quiet because every single resident was at the ridiculously large, loud and confusing street market into which we so naively wandered, thinking it was ¨quaint.¨ This was a magical realm of produce, animal parts, party animals, other party supplies, perfumes, cosmetics, furniture, clothing, toys, unidentified popped grains, shoes, and pretty much anything else you could possibly need on your stay here on Earth. This market sprawled endlessly like the spindly hand of Adam Smith himself. The afternoon quickly became the evening, and we continued to wander aimlessly, a bag of fried sardines in one hand and candied popcorn in the other (Victoria had the sardines...), until we had our fill and realized that the sun had been down for hours. Costco, my ass.

Day 34 - Sun 9.26.10
VOYAGE ON LAKE TIHIHEEHEEHEE...

A short boat-ride out into the lake from Copacabana sits the pristine Isla del Sol. Inca lore tells that this is the birthplace of the sun, the origin of all being or life on earth, or something to that effect. A brief visit to the island makes it abundantly clear why one would ascribe such significance to this place. Sheer rock walls jutting out from clear, flat water, brilliant and uninterrupted sunlight, high perches on cliffs hundreds of feet above the shore, and jagged snowcapped peaks occasionally visible miles across the water.

We took a morning boat from the beach at Copacabana and arrived on the northern shore of Isla del Sol. After picking up our bag lunches (dear Bolivian women, yes, offering a fried egg and

french fries inside a hamburger is an excellent idea), we followed our old-dude guide up the winding coastal path to the sacred temple sites on the northern tip of the island. A lot of the ruins are pre-Inka: some temple remnants, some sacrificial altars, the works.

From there we set off the hike the length of the island, along the high spine of the ridges above the water. Even though we´d been at something close to this altitude for weeks on and off, we still found it quite challenging to propel ourselves up any sort of hill. We suffered a bit, but fortunately we came prepared (see detail of hamburger, above).

All in all, the scenery was as breathtaking, as was trying to hike at 12,000 feet. Instead of passing a peaceful night on la Isla, we hopped onto a very slow boat back to Copacabana, to seek our fortunes across the sea...

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Day 33 - Sat 9.25.10
THE WE-FINALLY-GOT-A-MOTORCYCLE DIARIES

Today we left Puno bright and early to make the 7:30am bus bound for Copacabana, Bolivia. Much excitement and anxiety surrounded the idea of this border crossing, mainly because Victoria decided, late the previous evening, to adopt a life a crime by avoiding the ridiculous ¨visa¨ payment imposed by the Bolivian government on American tourists (and ONLY American tourists, mind you) in the amount of $135. Given that one can purchase a medium-sized pack of Bolivian llamas for this amount, she thought it best to try her hand at international fraud rather than cough up her hard-earned dollars.

The plan was such: ever-prepared, Victoria brought along her 10 year-old Argentine DNI (national document of identity) which conveniently never got stamped with an expiration date. Is this document valid for international travel? Nope. Is she a resident of Buenos Aires, as it claims? Nope. Does she look even remotely like the teenager she once was, who is featured
in the DNI photo? This is up to personal interpretation. Did the Bolivian authorities give it a second thought after seeing the word Argentina on the leather cover and having a short conversation about fútbol? Absolutely not. Conclusion: Victoria crossed the border with an illegal document and Joseph, who used a valid American Passport and payed dutifully, was held up for half an hour filling out forms and answering unnecessary questions. I love South America.

We arrived in Copacabana about 20 minutes later. If the names of this town evokes the image tranquil beaches, cheap mojitos and gorgeous sunsets, you would be right in your assumption. Though not the fabled Copacabana of the Lola, the showgirl, or her tantalizing Cha-Cha moves, it is quite a place. Oh, and did I forget to mention that Copacabana is found of the banks of Lake Titic... Titicac... I can´t bring myself to say it.

Lunch was followed by a very important moment in Joseph and Victoria´s trip. With great flare, they boldly added a metallic blue motorcycle to their list of modes of transportation. Or, rather, Joseph boldly added it, as Victoria clung to him for dear life. Any technical difficulties aside (repeatedly stalling out, swallowing a unidentified flying insect, the dirt road suddenly ending, general inability to operate a motorcycle...) it was really an incredible way to view the coast of Lake Titicac... nope. The terrain is so mountainous and the lake is so vast that it really feels like you are looking out onto the ocean. That, and we got some major street cred.




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Day 32 - Fri 9.24.10
BROLL DOWN YOUR WINDOW, BRO, WE´RE BROASTING IN HERE

So the higher-class buses on this continent are shiny two story affairs, with nice reclining seats and fancy TVs. Many of them also have these sweet-looking front seats on the 2nd floor, directly above the driver, where this glass bubble offers a full front-window view. In what we thought to be a stroke of genius, we had arranged to get said front seats for the 6 hour journey from Arequipa to Puno. The bus ride passes through an immense nature reserve where it is common
to see large herds of the rare vicuña (a deerlike camelid, cousin to the llama and alpaca), so we were looking forward to the ride.

Now, if you´ve ever been to Peru, or a desert, or if you´ve been reading our blog, you may have inferred that it gets rather warm during the daytime in this area. Namely from the total absence of clouds. Our exposed glass bubble quickly became more of a mobile greenhouse, and, since offering the ability to open bus windows seems not to have hit Peru yet, we sweltered in the intense stuffiness for the better part of the day.

6 groggy and naseu-vomitous hours later, we arrived at Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Yes. Titicaca. Pause for laughter. Here begins the 4 day portion of the trip when Joseph´s brainwave activity consists almost entirely of running the lyrics to the Animaniac´s song ¨Lake Titicaca.¨ (It´s from their geography album - an excellent addition to any record collection, if you aren´t already familiar with it.) ¨It´s between Bolivia and Peru, waters so tranquil and blue, etc.... ¨

Not too much is shaking in Puno, and on the advice of several travelers who have preceeded us, we opt to explore the lake from the Bolivian side. Same lake, much more favorable exchange rate.

We would be remiss were we not to explain today´s title in some detail. So nearly every city block in Peru has a rotissere chicken restaurant -- truly beautiful and sweet-smelling places. For some reason that continues to elude us, these places are all called Broasters. Pollo broaster. Chicken broaster. Broasteria. Broast, not roast. How the extra B got added... we´re not sure. So, in honor of our culinary foray into the world of broasted chicken (it was a delicious foray), we offer you today´s caption.