A bad Bolivian police movie

Well, so it seems that the odds finally turned against me ! After more than 4 months of relatively safe and easy travel, I got robbed... in a bloody taxi in bloody Bolivia. Not that it was bloody, luckily, by lack of any real physical violence, by the REAL threath was certainly there. In short, what will you do if they tell you will stripped down of everything, stuck in a cab, if you don´t give up your valuables ? Give it up, I´d say, ´cause I didn´t want to end up in some Bolo chicken stew !In short, it all happened in less than 5 minutes...getting out of the bus terminal in Santa Cruz after a 16h night bus ride from Sucre (my LAST one now I can assure you!) at 7am, with my head still in my ass, and getting into a cab outside the terminal. Mistake 1 : never to take a cab outside a bus or flight terminal...well, they cost half the price but they´re also half as safe or twice as dangerous in my case. Mistake 2 : not to get into the back of the cab, with all my luggage next to me, buying the taxista´s excuse that the front seat was wet and that I couldn´t sit there. Mistake 3 : not to take a look at the license plate before to get in to the cab... Soooo many people told me about this scam, and warned me : ´Always take a look at the plate and the cab´s number and NEVER get into a cab with other people.´ Well, after 4 months you start bending the rules, especially in Bolivia, where colectivo taxis are the rule if you want to drive cheap. And up til now, even though some Toyota taxis look like they will fall apart any minute, they had proven to be safe. And in my experiences with old Toyota´s, I have rarely been dissapointed. Anyways, I had not even given the cab driver my directions (which he oddly enough couldn´t locate), or he stopped and 2 other guys got into the cab. One in the back, and a few meters further, one in the front. The cab driver quickly put his coat over the seat and told the guy he could sit there. Mistake 4 : to start talking to them, and answering their questions on where I came from and where I was going. Small chit chat in cabs is like your daily free Spanish course in Latin America. I rarely will not talk to cab drivers, it´s just WHAT you tell them, right ? By this time, the guy in the front got really serious and pulled out (what proved to be a fake) police ID. He told us he was looking for drugs in luggage of foreigners and fake dollars. By the moment I heard this line, I knew I was in trouble. I had heard about the scam before in La Paz, but this was with ´fake´ cops on the street. And from those, you just walk away, no matter what they say. Except if they pull a knife or gun of course. But here I was in a cab, being told we were going to the ´police station´ to do a complete ´search´on me. When I asked him to stop to get into another cab, he wouldn´t. Meanwhile, the third guy in the back was fully ´cooperating´and showed the cop all his ´dollars´ (probably fake) and his bag, that he quickly sniffed through and gave back. ´You see, nobody is going to get robbed here.´ Yeah right : BIG mistake 5 if anybody would believe that !So when he insisted on showing me my bag and my dollars, I told him I would only do so in a real police office, and that normally he didn´t have the right to search me, even if he was a real cop. Getting nervous by so much gringo smart talk in Spanish, he started yelling at me and told me they would ´take care of me´ in the police station if I wouldn´t show my bag. Getting pretty scared now, I slowly opened my bag and had him have a look, hoping that at one point a red light would turn up so I could jump out. But no chance, he brutally ripped the bag out of my hands, and start going through my stuff, camera and the works. I told him I wanted the bag back but he wouldn´t let me, saying that he was looking for fake dollars. Getting to the point where I was seeing no more exits than to give up my money as well, I slowly pulled out my 215 dollars out of my secret side pocket and showed them to him. He quickly took them as well, and on that moment I grabbed on to my bag, rather loosing the money than all the stuff in there. He yelled again that nothing was being robbed and showed me, putting the boliviano money in the bag. Now, desperate, I grabbed my bag by force, and the taxi stopped. The guy yelled even more at me now, shouting ´Baja ! Baja !´ (´Get out !´), which I did, almost shitting my pants. I was never more scared in my life. I was too confused to think straight so... Mistake 6 : I didn´t get the plate number of the cab. I must say he took a real quick turn and when I ran after it (so far as I could with my 18kg bag), he was already too far to see. Then I looked in my bag and I saw that my dollars and my camera were gone... Mistake 7 : not to have taken out my memory card while on the road. You can replace a camera (hell, the insurance company MAYBE refund you like 30% of its value if you get lucky, the bastards!) but you can´t replace pictures... So I lost more than 150 pics of my trip through Bolivia (the ones I didn´t put up on the Internet), and that was the hardest pill to swallow. And moreover, it was all on the 512MB card that my brother lent me... All I can say now is that Latin America is maybe not that safe as I thought. Well, I knew it was unsafe - you hear the wildest stories ! - but all those things always happened to other people !It nearly makes me forget to tell you what a wonderful trip I had on my last week in Bolivia, hanging out at the Potosi mines (when you see how people work there, it makes you think again about the value of life...) and cruising through beautiful Sucre. I went to the national museum of Bolivian history over there, which was a hilarious experience, having a very enthousiastic guide who knew that General Sucre, one of the liberatadores of Bolivia, originally was from Belgium. Maybe from Tienen?? I saw some memorable stuff like the last Bolivian flag ever risen over the Bolivian port town of Antofagasta (before the lost it to Chile) and the army outfit of the last general to surrender, and his last famous words : ´Rendirme? Que se rinda su abuela, carajo!´ (´Surrender? Your grandmother right, asshole!´). Hehe, wish I could have told that to my robber !And now here I am in hot and steamy Brazzzzil, taking it easy after a couple of days of fever (one setback never comes alone!), but that story is for the Brazil section! Hasta luego!

Salt, dead trains and blood red lagoons

Bolivia is not only a country of extremes, it's also a weird and surrealistic place at times ! It has night busses that stop at 3am in the middle of the desert to pick up women and children, music TV channels that play the same video clip 4 times in a row, other shows that discuss the utility of traffic lights (very hot topic in La Paz!), soft drinks that taste like liquid bubble gum, hotel ladies that try to steal your underwear while they're in the laundry (with mine, that was WEIRD for sure!), and most of all the most bizarre landscapes you would ever come across.Like I said before, Bolivia is a place that gets into your system. Certainly if you get on the 14h night bus from La Paz to Uyuni, and you get out as all the locals get on at 3am, looking at a full scale lit star night, wondering where the hell you are. You take a deep breath and try to wake up : the 3700m altitude already makes it hard to breath, and the bus ride makes it even worse. 70 people in a bus of 50, with niños sleeping in the aisle, and all you smell is dead chicken, and al you breath is dust. A nine year old hangs half over your lap, since he's already too big to sleep in the aisle. That's Bolivia. But Bolivia is also waking up with a blowing sun on your face, and starting your travel life all over again with a nice electric hot shower (they look like a prototype of the electric chair and as safe as Bolivians make them, but they're HOT!) and a filling desayuno americano. Uyuni is a good place to do that, wondering why and how they ever built this town in literaly the middle of nowhere. Well, to start, Uyuni was a mining town for a very long time, and also a very important railway center on the way to Argentina and Chile. Yes, they have trains on 3700m, in the middle of the desert ! Bolivia has no sea (the Chileans 'stole' it from them 130 years ago - well, the Bolivians were so stupid as well to 'lose' it, the president was too busy celebrating carnaval before sending out the troops), so all they got going for them in the 19th century were train tracks, and they have loads of them ! Just outside Uyuni, you can go see for yourself how the Industrial Revolution reached the Altiplano : tons of steel have come to die there on the biggest train graveyard in the world. Old steam trains slowly rust away under utter blue skies, quite a sight. There is a small monument as well (Bolivians love those), screaming out the injustice of modern times : ' No a la aviacion ! '. If that ever would have saved the steam train. Getting the taste of this Bolivian surrealism, we got ourselves on a 4 day tour through some of the most bizarre places I have ever seen. First day, driving through desert, hiding away from the bitter cold in a random desert town with electricity for 2 hours, eating the most delicous vegetable soup and playing cards with refound travel mate Kurt and Dutchman Bram, until the shut down generator left us with only darkness. Second day, more red desert (I felt I was on one of those explorer thingies NASA put on Mars), gazing at hot geysers and bubbling mud, with steam coming out of the ground that smelled of rotten eggs. Not to go near though, because earlier on an Israeli girl fell in and burned off one of her legs in the 200º boiling mud. The same day, more bizarre beautiful, when our guide drove us to Laguna Verde (well, it was rather turquoise than green), on the back drop of a huge black volcano, half covered in beige sand... Red sand on the groud, white foam on the shore, blue skies, it kept on getting better and better. The next stop was Laguna Colorada, a blood red lagoon (due to plankton activity), home to thousands of pink flamingos... Yeah right, pink flamingos in the desert at 4000m ! Wow. Next day, more desolation driving through red desert, along Mount Dooms on both sides, before arriving at a place right out of a Salvador Dali painting... Rocks that seemed to come out of the ground, in the most bizarre forms and shapes. I was so disorientated and daydreaming that I stumbled over one of them and cut my finger. Quite a reality check ! At night, sleeping in the desert town of San Juan, where we visited the local museum (how to kill a llama in prehistoric times) and experienced a wicked (literally!) sunset over one of a few remaining Inca burial grounds, where the mummies were staring us in the face from in their Alien egg-shaped chullpas... Talking about scary !Fourth and last day, we got up at 3.30am and drove two hours to what proved to be the highlight of this trip : the Uyuni salt flats. We caught the sunrise over the endless white, the sky burned... I'd say a paradise for any photographer or Pink Floyd getting inspiration for a new CD cover. Shadows play around, mirages of white lagunes in the far, mountains that seem to float in the blue sky, a complete 2 dimensional world lacking any depth perspective... Another wow ! And in the middle of the madness, an island full of cactusses, some reaching 12m heigh, growing on fossilised algae. Weird ! A hike to the top gave me a moment or two : at first, the overwhelming white silence was eerie and blinding, but then idyllic. Needless to say we were all blown away by this endless beauty, but not for too long. We got to Culchani, the 'salt' town, where everybody lives of the salt trade : people still work up the sand by hand, getting it on 50 year old trucks (new ones would rust away anyway), selling the white cristals off at 20 centavos (2 eurocent) per kilo... There is enough salt left for another 1000 years, but nobody will ever get rich off it. It's sad to see how a beautiful and such 'rich' country as Bolivia can be so underdeveloped, exploited and poor.As I write this, tensions are getting high again about the sale of Bolivian gas, and from which port it should be exported. Last October, huge scale riots erupted when the government wanted to sell the gas through all time enemy Chile, and now again, it seems that the campesinos and the all powerful union COB are in for another round of strikes and blocades. So facing being stuck here, I am hasting my way to Brazil before the end of the month, visiting on my way the mining town of Potosi and Sucre, the colonial pearl of Bolivia so they say. More news to follow from there !

Breathless Bolivia part 1

Bolivia is a country of extremes : it goes from the high Andes mountains to the low Amazon, from the cold Altiplano to the steaming Yungas jungle, from the very fast Internet to the very s-l-o-w busses, and from the very rich to the very poor. The capital La Paz is like a concentrated sample of all these extremes. The city just sits there in the valley, with all the nice areas and buildings downtown and the poorer areas shrugged against the hill. And on top of the hill, at 4000m, breaths El Alto, the fastest growing city in Latin America. El Alto lacks everything : air, paved streets, decent water and housing,... it just has lots of shacks, chaotic markets and blue diesel exhausts. It's quite a sight when you enter La Paz via El Alto : you think it's the city already, until you gasp down and see the soup bowl of the capital open up below you. La Paz itself isn't less chaotic then El Alto, just a bit cleaner and safer. The city looks like one big market place, where literally anything is sold on the street : from copied DVD's, car parts, clothes, stolen cameras, coca leafs to the bizarre of dried llama foetusses on the Witches Market. Apparently, no house in La Paz is build without a llama foetus under the foundations, keeps bad spirits away so they say. The street is also crowded with masked shoeshine boys (they look more dangerous than they are) and all sorts of fortune tellers, who by the side of fallen coca leafs can predict your luck. Anyways, La Paz wasn't really my kind of place to hang out at for too long : it's too crowded, noisy and polluted. But there are tons of fun things to do around La Paz ! And since I was getting the hang of these Bolivian extremes (getting stuck at the roadblock coming from Peru was a new one), I was in for a couple more ! Inspired by new met Canadian roomie John (I've met more Canadians on this trip than in the rest of my life), I took on the challenge to climb Huyana Potosi, a 6088m high mountain in the Cordillera Real. Yes ! I had to sleep on it one night when he asked me, but after some good climb advice and research on the internet (apparently this is a relatively safe and easy mountain) I was in for it ! So we left (me without telling Leen, she would have died in fear) in good spirits, but the 4 of us soon found out that this wasn't going to be a walk in the park. After bringing up all our stuff to the base camp at 5500m, I got a pounding headache, and the others weren't in best shape either. Luckily, some Dafalgan and hot soup eased the pain, but much sleep wasn't to expect. I tried to rest some (and warm up) but by 1am the guides woke us up with coca tea and off we went ! It was a beautiful quiet night, and under the light of the stars and the full moon we made steady progress until John got very sick. He was in bad shape but miraculously caught up with us half way to the summit. By that time, I had no juice left in my legs (the chocolate helped some but not much) and for every 5 steps, I had to catch my breath for 30sec. Luckily, I felt fine for the rest and being able to stop at my ease, I made it to the base of the summit. There, at 5900m, we faced a 240m tall ice wall, on a 40 degrees angle, and we all stopped. 'Fuck ! Do we need to get up on this thing ?!!' We all gasped for air and I asked myself if I was really up for this. I had never climbed a mountain before (John had climbed Kilimanjaro) and this part was quite technical, where we would need to use our ice axe and crampons. Michael, the Austrian in our group, gave up at that moment, so we were left with the question if we wanted to continue or go down as well. After a minute of heavy breathing, some water and chocolate, and the view of the rising sun, I thought 'I didn't come all this way to quit here at the base of the summit !', so the crazy man in me told the guide ' Vamonos!' and off we climbed. It took us about 30min to get on top, but it seemed ages. My legs were about to cramp up completely, but they withstood the torture of the climb. I was warm the whole climb and that was my luck I think : thank God for Patagonia thermal underwear, North Face fleeces and Thinsulate glooves. I would have died without them. My other campanions were shivering though so being first on the rope, I tried to go as fast as I could. All my worst demons and cutest angels passed by on that climb, but it was worth it. At 7am we stood at 6088m, and I still don't know how we did it. But that time, the euphory had eased all the pain, and in no time we were down again, broke up base camp, made it to the jeep and slept for 14 hours. Bolivia has the kicks for sure ! For more downhill excitement, read Breathless Bolivia part 2 !

Breathless Bolivia part 2

Getting on and off a 6088m mountain, I thought I would be done with dangerous stuff in Bolivia. Well, I would have to guess again !!! This country has a whole lot more kicks in stock, but I just picked one more. Starting in La Cumbre near La Paz, at an altitude of 4700m, I biked down the 63km to Oroico, sitting at a nice and breathable 1750m. The road that goes that way is called 'The Death Road', because apparently it is the most dangerous road in the world. Well, one study back in 1997 determined this, since the road has about one fatal accident every other day ! It's a steep 3km drop from the misty Cordillera Real pass of La Cumbre to the lush setting of Coroico. On the way, the weather changes from foggy, cold and snowy to dusty and steamingly hot. Nice ! As promised, it was the kick of a life-time, and unlike any downhill mountain road in Europe you can bike, this one keeps on coming to you for more ! Since safety is a big concern on this road, I picked a company that really had excellent bikes, a radio guide and good knowledge of the terrain. If you ever want to do this, go with Eco Adventure Bolivia, they're the best. Anyways, after a shivering start at La Cumbre, we were quickly flying down over asphalt (only the first 15km are paved though), zooming by cars and trucks, all making their long way down to holiday resort Coroico. Since it was Easter Friday, there was a lot of traffic on the road, as well as other (reckless) bikers. Unfortunately, one Bolivian girl who attempted this road on her own and without a helmet slipped, crashed into the concrete and died. The road served its deadly honour. In our group as well, one older Bolivian guy neglected safety warnings and slipped, luckily going uphill, and had to be taken to the hospital for stitches in his face. Anyways, I wasn't thinking about all the crashing possibilities on the road, and just put the mind and body to the adrenaline test, which was great at 65km an hour. Together with a couple of bike-minded Aussies, we had put ourselves in the 'fast group', and by the time we hit the unpaved part, we were drooling on the 1km ravines right next to us. Every 100m we passed a cross of another unlucky soul, and from a far we could see the scars of numerous landslides that crashed cars and trucks in the deep as well. The road was getting muddy by that point as well, as several waterfalls just dump their water on the way. Nice and wet. After a couple of stops for the necessary food and refreshments, we hit the jungle part which gradually became hotter and hotter. By this time, our guide had a green light to go full speed again, and with no trucks or combis in sight (well we could hardly see them in the dust anyways) we were going full suspension on the rocks and stones, sometimes breaking for a curb or dog on the way. And after 3.5h of pure kicks we reached Coroico, where we could shower off the dust of our faces, get lunch and grab a cold beer with the kick ass view of the road we just did. If that weren't enough, the Hotel Esmeralda where we cleaned up let us take a dip in their pool, which was together with the warm sun the best treat ever after so many days at high altitude. No need to mention that after this trip, I was completely knackered and slept for 14h again. Bolivia gets in your system !So, after this week of kicks and dangerous undertakings, I am going to take it easy and wait until the Easter madness blows over before heading my way to Uyuni, where I hopefully join up again with my other Canadian buddy Kurt and drive around the Salares (salt deserts) for 4 days. Until then, ten cuidado and drive safe ! (no option in Bolivia)

Lago Titicaca, que frio !

There was a day when I started planning this trip, that I was dreaming about Bolivia : a country landlocked in South America, its sea edge 'stolen' by Chile ; a country with people so poor but with natural resources so rich ; a country with endless mountain ridges, salt deserts and steamy jungle ; a country that my good friend Lore had described with so much humour while living there for a year ; a country for which I had to take my time if I wanted to visit it. So, a bit fed up with the endless touristic hassle in Cuzco, I wanted to get a break as fast as possible and head down to Bolivia. Well, like you might have read in my last Peru story, this was a bit a mistake, never rush when there's still some stuff to do or see ! Well, if you have time to do and see it of course. Anyways, having been already in Bolivia, I really look forward to going back there. The introduction in the lake town of Copacabana (not to confuse with the Rio beach, going there later hehe) gave me already a bit of a taste : Bolivian siñoras that look up from under their hats at those strange gringos passing by, cars and camiones getting a colorful blessing in front of the Cathedral, a filling menu del dia and a mouthful of conversation for 10 bolivianos (about 1 euro), taxistas and bus drivers catching customers at loud voice, La Pa La Pa La Paz !! But for the rest... well honestly, there isn't much to do there (much like in Puno, at the other side of the lake), unless you get on a boat to some of the nearby islands or hike your way around the peninsula. Faced by a bit of rain and lots of cold, I decided to do the first thing and get on a two day trek around Isla del Sol. Well, when I got there, it didn't really live up to its name and by the end of the first day, I was feeling homesick for the first time in about 4 months. There was literaly nothing to do on the island, and the rain only made it more miserable. Luckily, I found a good hostal to crash for the night, and there I ran into a triple of really cool guys : Rob, a London college student ; Matt, a cast away English chap, gardening in Barcelona and travelling for most of his other time, and Kurt, a talentful Canadian musician just out of high school. With the four of us, we plunged into cheap Bolivian rum (what else can you do?), cardgames and an hilarious music jam on one guitar (all 4 playing the songs we knew). Needless to say I was already feeling a lot better. Not only the music and conversation helped, so did some hot soup and fried trout. That was about the only thing I could get on the island, but hey it was warm inside the resto so I didn't complain. I also tried to help out a couple of locals who were desperately trying to set up an antenna to catch the Bolivia-Chile soccer match on TV. Since it only passed on cable in Bolivia, they had put up the antenna on the highest point of the island, so they could catch the Peruvian signal coming from the other side. Unfortunately, the interference at 3900m altitude was a bit too strong, and after the commentator shouted over the radio 'Goooooooooooooaaaaal de Chillllleeeeeee!!!', the 5 technicians and 15 supporters decided to leave the snow on the screen for what it was. Chile won 0-2. It looked like the second day would be a copy of the first, starting off with rain and a chilly wind. It left Kurt and me almost desperate to leave (Matt and Rob already had), but just by the time we were almost packing our stuff, the sun broke through and in no time it was dry and hot ! So we took on the challenge to hike to the southern ruins of the Templo del Sol, where we had a full size picknick (at least I brought enough food!) of cheese, crackers, apples, bananas, Twix and Snickers. And after that, we even took on the challenge of taking our stinky bodies for a dip in the freezingly cold lake. I guess it must have been at 9-10 degrees, so verrrrry cold ! But the strong sun dried us in no time. So, having gotten a taste of the lake, I told myself I had to get back to Peru for some more. And so I did (see previous Peru section) ! After all the excitement and wonderful things I have seen around Lago de Titicaca, I feel very lucky. Lucky to be able to travel where I want and when I want, going by gut feeling and curiosity. Lucky to have still 3-4 weeks left to explore some parts of Bolivia, before heading east to Brazil. So, tomorrow I am off to La Paz (hopefully the weather there will be as good as the last 2 days, but I'd doubt it), the capital of Bolivia. More news to come from the Altiplano before Easter !

Lago Titicaca, que bueno !

I was about to leave Peru, God almighty I already was in Bolivia when I noticed I had forgotten something in Peru... Not my camera or my brother's terrific fleece, no no ! Something much more important : a visit to a couple of more places at beautiful Lake Titicaca. How breathtaking (literaly!!) the lake maybe was at the other side (see the Bolivian section for more details), I felt I had done this place a big injustice by rushing my way from Cuzco to Copacabana, Bolivia. After just a day on La Isla del Sol on the Bolivian side, I knew I had to go back and visit some more islands on the Peruvian side. So said and done : back on the 3h bus to Puno, getting some more stamps in my already inky passport and the day after on the boat over the lake. And I didn't regret it one single second ! The lake area at the Peruvian side is best known for its 'floating islands', just an hour away from the lakeshore at Puno. The more than 40 islands are built with many layers of reed bundles, which are constantly renewed from the top as they rot away from the bottom, so the surface is always soft and dry. Several hundreds of people of the Uros tribe still live on these islands, living of fishing and tourism, but remaining their own identity. The story goes that the Uros people started their floating existence centuries ago to isolate themselves from the aggresive Collas and Incas on the mainland. Although the 'touristic discovery' of these islands has led to some over-commercialisation, I felt very much at ease on the island we visited. We were in a small group of tourists and none were acting like they were in a zoo, shooting Indians. From the locals' side, there was no begging for pictures either, and little harrassing with handicrafts and the like. It almost seemed for some that we weren't there, which made the observation all the more interesting. From the reed islands, we took a 3h boat ride to Isla Amantani (a real island this time), where we would spend the night with a local family. Again, I had heard stories about this trip being very 'superficial and petty zoo like' (this was the main reason I skipped the whole thing at first), but it was all the contrary. My Israeli roomie Liran and I had a great time with our homestay family, enjoying some of the best food I had so far in Peru (aaaahhh the hot sopa de verduras after the long hike!!!) and their incredible hospitality. We also had a lot of fun dancing the night away in local outfit, fiercely supported by the locals. The beer supply wasn't in European proportions, but this minor problem was quickly overcome with the finding of another crate of yummie Cusqueña. The island has no roads, no cars, no electricity (some have a solar panel though) and all the Quechua speaking inhabitants are vegetarians. Not by principle or belief, just because they don't have the money to buy a fish boat or keep cattle. They find chickens and pigs quite unpractical too, no they like the simple life of growing potatoes and corn. Well, this place almost looked like Hobbiton, including the small doors (ouch my head!!)! The whole island is self-sufficient, and the few things they need get traded on the Puno market or bought with the tourist money. All decisions are taken communally, and taken care for as well, like the construction of a new camino from the dock to the town. Everybody is involved, from the women carrying up the stones as the men, doing all the macho cement work and the chewing of kilos of coca. On the negative side, very few people on the island have the money to study on the mainland, or have decent health care. Climate changes have had their toll as well, with temperature increases and unusual heavy rain destroying crops and causing erosion of the delicate terraces. Luckily, the 8 island communities work together to tackle this problem, by improving drainage of the soil and practicing rotating crop growing. Just a 30min boat ride across the lake from Amantani lies Isla Taquile, another peaceful 'out of this world' place. The views along the lake shore path are amazing : the intense glittering blue of the lake contrasts with the green terraces and the red-colored soil, making almost your eyes hurt if you don't wear sunglasses. The highland sun is so strong at this altitude (4100m at the top) that even sunblock made our English companions' face peel off. The island is very quiet, and besides the scenery, you only meet people busy knitting colorful hats and other garments, yes even the men!! It's quite a sociological thing, with men wearing red hats if they are married, and red-white ones if they're single. Single women walk along very shy, Muslim-like hidden away behind a black cap, whereas the married women proudly show off their face. It's some sight to see Latino men with a knitting work in their hands while you catch your breath on the way up the hills. Oh well, like you probably noticed, Peru is some place to come back to. It's a big place, and I have only seen a tiny bit of it. I will be sad to leave again tomorrow, but I know that on the other side of the lake, there lies another destination that's even unmatched as this place. Viva Bolivia !