Lamest. Night. Ever.

First, let me preface this story by saying that everyone, and I mean everyone, kept telling me how much fun I was going to have going out in Santa Cruz. Of course, it was going to take some killer night-life to live up to the hype. But that's not exactly what I got.

I went out around 12:30. Generally, Santa Cruz is pretty dispersed - most of it has come about since the 1960's, so it's more car-oriented than a lot of other Bolivian cities. So it's not walkable, and there aren't really little pockets of stuff like restaurants and bars, like in Cochabamba. So I took a cab to an area that was supposed to have a fairly heavy concentration of clubs, but when I got there, nothing was open. Instead what I found was a bunch of kids showing off their sound systems and drinking in the street. It was funny, too, because it was sort of a sound-off between rap like Tupac and reggaeton on one side, and traditional pena music on the other. Basically, it was a musical train wreck.

So I bought some beer and was wandering around drinking, and then I got yelled at for wandering too far off the main drag. You see, there were 8 or so clubs in three blocks, but then on each end of those blocks was a church and a school (but between them is OK). And you can't have open containers near those, I guess. Interesting choice of locations for the clubs.

A security guard told me that the clubs would be opening at two, so I wandered around, watching guys with tricked-out cars try and convince the few girls around that their dick was bigger than the other guy's with the tricked out car; homeless guys either passed out in front of car dealers or collecting bottles after the drunken youth (a stark image of Bolivia's disparity); and girls with coolers selling cans to passing motorists.

There was a prominent billboard with a goldpanner shaking out his nuggets into a camel design; "discover more," the advertisement urged. Discover what? I wondered. What will I discover by smoking Camels? I guess the company is hoping consumers will think the answer is "gold" and not "lung cancer."

To kill time, I wandered into a super-fancy hotel just down the street, trying to convince them I was a wealthy industrialist and that they should show me around. They were nice enough to give me a brochure before they ussured me out, at least.

Next, I thought I might try my hand at slots - there was a little casino in the area (also OK, as long as it's between and not adjacent to the church or school) - even though slots are the most mundane and boring form of gambling - or so I thought. When I went inside, what I found was bank after bank of electronic bingo machines. Bingo is boring enough in real life (I've played once), let alone with no friends to bullshit with and only your lonely desperation for company (and not even free booze, like real casinos). I didn't bother (I wasn't that lonely and desperate YET).

2am rolls around, and nothing opens. I ask a couple more security guards, who say nothing is open tonight, although they wouldn't really explain why. So I got in a cab and asked him to take me to an open club with people. Which he did; the club we went to had traffic parked for blocks, and fancy wheels, too: Jags and Mercedes, stuff like that. I guess what I didn't specify was that I wanted to go someplace that I could get into - the fucker took me to a private club. I started chatting with a guy outside, and when he went in he tried to convince the bouncers to let me in with him (he was a member), but the bouncer just looked me up and down and said "no." At least by now I was near my hotel, and since it was 3:30 by this point, I headed back to enjoy my air conditioning and curse myself for drinking a redbull (thinking I'd be drinking all night) and thinking that maybe some electronic bingo sounded like a good time.

Like I said, pretty much the lamest night ever.

I just thought this was really stupid

So I just had the thought that I should take a look at scholarships for next year (a little late, I know, but better late than... you know). And look at this one I found:


Specialty Equipment Market Association SEMA Memorial Scholarship Fund
Date Posted:2006-03-23
Scholarship applicants must possess a minimum 2.5 GPA and be pursuing a course of study leading to a career in the automotive aftermarket or related field. They must be enrolled full-time at an accredited college, university, or proprietary program in the United States or Canada and must remain enrolled as a full-time student for the full academic year of the award. Expected graduation date must be 12/01/07 or later.
Deadline:
2007-04-27
Amount:
$1,000 - $4,000

OK, let's forget that the first requirement is a pretty lackluster 2.5GPA. But look at the other bit: student must be "pursuing a course of study leading to a career in the automotive aftermarket or related field." OK, now look at how much money they're giving out - up to $4,000. Now make sure you understand that this is a UNIVERSITY scholarship. Basically, some group of idiots out there thought that the best career to nudge today's youth towards is to tell them to go to a four-year institution of higher learning so they can be the best damn marketer of speakers and rims the world has ever seen. What the fuck is this?! Someone is giving out FOUR LARGE to the one with the most potential to push spinners on new Escalade owners? And what's more, apparently they don't have to be too bright or motivated - "don't worry, a C+ average is good enough for us!"

Just one other reason our education system is totally fucked.

I *finally* made it out of La Paz, after a hectic day of running around at the last minute: my footage from Canal 7 was supposed to be ready at 5pm, but it was closer to 6, and I had to fill out a bunch of paperwork before they would give it to me. I was trying to make the 7:30 bus, so it was pretty tight. I had to run home, finish packing, make a hasty good-bye to Perttu, and rush to the bus station and hope they still had a ticket for me. They did, but I realized too late it was on a 42-seat bus instead of a 36-seater. That means a lot less comfort, which matters on a 16-hour ride (although I guess I really shouldn't complain after reading about Tim's experiences in Africa).

And since I was so late, I didn't exactly get my pick of seats - I was downstairs next to the bathroom, on one of the non-functioning windows. I was sitting next to an annoying lady who wouldn't stop asking me inane questions: is that a radio? What is it? What's it called? Do you like Bolivian food? Look, there's the handicraft market. Americans hate Hugo Chavez, don't they? When she went to dig something out of her bag, I got out my crosswords and started doing a puzzle. But that didn't stop her: do you make more money in the government or working in private industry in the United States? And since she was twice my size, I guess she felt entitled to push me off the armrest and hang into my seat. And she snored. She's my new best friend.

The window situation got bad when we started to descend and temperature broke 90: it kind of turned the bus into a sweat-box for the people in the front row who didn't have windows. But when the sun came up, and we stopped for breakfast, I swear I stepped off the bus into Thailand. The landscape had changed so much from the altiplano: there were palms and thatch-roofed huts dotting the landscape, red tropical dirt, little motos zipping about, and fresh papaya for breakfast. And the heat plus the humidity was the kicker - I was really back in Asia. It was surreal.

It changed when I got to Santa Cruz though; arriving here brought me back to Bolivia. Actually, I pictured Santa Cruz differently: this is supposed to be the richest city in the country, the seat of commerce and export-agriculture, but it's not so impressive. It seems like fancy cafes and boutiques dotted sparsely amidst run-down or abandoned lots covered with graffiti. Maybe it's just another sign of the extreme disparity in Bolivia, but Cochabamba seemed more affluent. Also, Cochabamba had street lights - Santa Cruz doesn't, and in some ways its even scarier than La Paz for pedestrians. Since there are no signals, even when one side of traffic can't go, they still creep forward, constantly looking for a break in traffic to make their move across. And, most of the traffic is made up of buses, which are big and scary and block your view; and motorcycles, which zip between the buses and are loathe to use their breaks.

I haven't been able to find the friend of my cousin's I was supposed to meet; so far no luck at the address or phone she gave. So I'm in a hostel in a bleak, sauna-like dorm room and a nice courtyard with hammocks, and one other cool feature: when I came out of the bathroom (boy did I need a shower after that bus ride), there was a toucan in the bush outside, not more than four feet from me. It had a bright orange beak with a big blue spot about six inches long, bigger than its body (yes, just like in the pictures and froot-loop commercials), and large eyes ringed with blue, and then with white. And it had its head cocked, staring at me; opening its beak to show me its weird, straw-like tongue (and to give the impression it could crack the bones in my fingers like a nut if it wanted, I thought). But I guess they're friendly enough - there were actually several hanging around the courtyard, and no one else seemed to take much notice.

Of course, in typical Bolivian fashion, the owners of the place manage to ruin whatever ambiance was created by putting a TV in the middle of it all and having the volume up really loud, all the time.

So here I am in Santa Cruz. It's hot here. I got some ice cream; it stopped the sweating for a while and was pretty much the best thing I've ever had in my whole life. All I want to do is sleep. I haven't been in real heat for a while.

Oh, just more of my pithy observations and rambling

Tag on the shirt I bought today:

The signature created
For professional skaters
Of the world spirit of
Adventure extreme resistent
Clothes the hard
Treatment the mark droors

My sugestion to Latin companies looking to translate their products into English is to stop using free online translators. I just don't think it's working.

So there was an Israeli in town that got in touch with some of my Bolivian friends on Couchsurfing (which I want to reitterate is a great site - http://www.couchsurfing.com), and they all came over to surprise me and make dinner. We made some Israeli food I forget the name of (shakuza or something) with tomatoes, garlic, hot peppers, bell peppers, and eggs. It's kind of like a thick stew, and you put a big pot in the middle and everyone scoops it out with bread. It was pretty tasty, although it was way too spicy for the Bolivian girls, and then I got under their skin by making fun of South Americans for being the biggest spice sissys ever. Which they are - this wasn't the first time I've heard complaints about non-spicy food from the locals; I couldn't even tell it was spicy. I guess spicy food is more of a Central American thing, or maybe just a Mexican thing.

So yeah, this guy, Doron, was pretty chill, although he still had plenty to say that I found to be... one-sided, I guess. Like he was saying about how now that the big Israeli barrier wall has been built, crime is way down and Israel is a lot safer. And about how Arab-Israelis are too scared to do anything wrong, because they know that they'll be snatched up by the police in minutes if anyone feels like complaining about them, and that England and France should be taking notes on how Israel handles its Muslims. And yes, I had plenty to say about those things, but I didn't really. I was trying to tell him about Muslim communities in America, and that generally they're very Americanized, wealthy, educated, etc., that America doesn't face the same issues with its Muslim communities as places like France, but he kept cutting me off to say things like "yeah, Muslims are really awful! I don't understand them at all!" Like when I said that Muslims in the US are pretty wealthy for the most part, he said "yeah, they're funnelling money for the terrorists!" OK, not my point, and not true, but OK.

I dunno. I guess it's pretty easy to criticize from the outside, but like I said before, I generally see the situation as Israel having all the guns and all the money and the Palestinians having nothing. And building walls to steel more territory doesn't strike me as helping that situation. It's kind of like the assholes who live in gaited communities so they don't have to acknowledge poverty, and because "it's safer here." Or, as David Cross says that really means, "it's whiter here. It stays white out later, if you get my drift."

So all the private security guards wear all this stuff with SWAT sewn onto it, which I find a little unnerving. Why? Because it seems to indicate an obvious inferiority complex, and I get nervous around guys with obvious inferiority complexes, especially when they're carrying billy clubs.

I saw two guys working on a building today, standing on a bench made from two sandbags; teetering on top of each sandbag were two large bricks, and streched between them was maybe a 12 foot board that was so bowed from their weight that I was surprised it was even holding them I thought it was a pretty Bolivian answer to "How will we make a bench for ourselves?" or maybe "how will I supply a bench to my employees?" I wished I'd had my camera.

So there was a power outage for most of the day today, which meant I had to trek up the stairs of my building to my 12th story apartment. It was then that I noticed that there are no fire alarms anywhere in the building - inside or outside the apartments - which is especially ominous given the iron bars that are locked from both sides (at least when the power isn't out) on the third floor. Maybe if there's a fire they unlock the door. Or maybe they did studies with convicts that found that there's a good chance of surviving a jump from the third story.

I know I mentioned that guy who was telling me how the government should re-nationalize everything that was privatized in the 90's while I was waiting for my interviews, but I didn't tell you what he mentioned about Evo: Evo never went to college. Or, in America, we would say Evo never went to high school (in LA, college comes before university, and is equivalent to what we would call high school). In a way, I think that's really cool, because he hasn't had all his convictions watered down by "education," and he didn't get to be president just because he's rich and his daddy was president. But in another way, I find it worrying. I mean, when he decides to "nationalize" the gas, and the technocrats at YPFB tell him "OK, so the plan is to switch from concession-based agreements to production-sharing agreements, so take will change this way and..." - do Evo and his cabinet have the ability to understand the nuances involved? And I feel like my concerns are played out in the conduct of national policy, because the impression I get from the Evo government is that they come up with something, like nationalizing gas or implementing a policy requiring American citizens to have tourist visas, and they say "hey, this is a good idea!" and then the announce it, and make a big deal about it, and then they get back to the office and think "how the hell are we going to do this?" Like with the gas, it's been 11 months since Evo declared "nationalization" and 5 months since new contracts were supposed to be secured, and contract negotiations are ongoing and the state still does not exercise majority control in the gas sector (just like before "nationalization," the state controls just under half of the stake in domestic gas operations. There is disagreement within the MAS party about how majority control will be secured - whether through a forced buy-out or an outright expropriation). In terms of the visas for Americans, Evo said in January that it would be a new requirement; no one, neither the American nor the Bolivian embassies, had any idea what it would mean (how much it would cost, whether or not it would require a consular visit, how long it would be valid for, etc.); in February the Bolivian embassy was saying beginning "sometime in March" (but still no details); once March rolled around the embassy was saying "April 1st. For real this time" (and still no details). Once April 1st came and went, information on the new visa mysteriously vanished from the embassy site. So I'm guessing it will happen whenever they can actually figure out how to do what it is they want to do, or not at all.

Uh, what else. I bought a cell phone, which I can't figure out how to use (I've never owned a cell phone before). You should have seen me before I got the menus into English, though. But the best part was when I bought the phone, the woman had to "adjust" the charger: I think the phones are smuggled in from Brazil, which has those diagonal outlets, so she took some pliers and twisted the prongs until they would fit into vertical holes. Genius! Of course, not as genius as putting the circuit breaker in the shower, which seems to be the norm here (and Peru. Actually, I have yet to be electrocuted by a Bolivian shower, whereas that happened regularly in Peru).

After we're done on the internet Perttu and I are going to the oxygen bar, which is actually just a couple blocks from our house. So that should be fun - La Paz is definitely a place that could use an oxygen bar! Actually, the other day I was walking down the main ave (which is at 10.5K feet) through all the pollution from all the diesel, and thinking that my body probably had a chronic oxygen shortage. I've never been to an oxygen bar, but I'll let you know how it goes.

And now, to try and fulfill my promise that this blog would have all the juicy, titillating stuff, please enjoy this digital photo manipulation I whipped up of my friend Natasha and I. This is of our secret lovers-rendezvous in Bermuda (you can see the ocean in the background if you squint), but don't tell my wife, famous Victoria's Secret model Gisele Bundchen!



Alright, it's fun pretending people are interested in anything I have to say... but c'mon, I'm looking pretty hot in those pinstripes, I think.

Oh yeah, one othert thing: I was sitting around waiting for my interview in the National Assembly building today (I spend probably 10 times longer waiting than I do interviewing), and I heard Nelson wolf-whistle. I turned to see a lone female figure making her way along the corridor, and I wasn't sure which was worse: that Nelson is so comfortable doing that that he isn't shy about doing it in front of foreign guests, or that I was forced to recognize that my instant reaction and reason for turning was to see if she was hot or not (as a foreign guest). I may not whistle, but I probably can't say I'm much better than that.

Ruined Temples and Ruined Feet

OK, first, if you read this and then go to my other blog and it seems the same, that's because I'm writing this one first and then will take out a couple things for la escuela.

So I'm back from Macchu Picchu, and I'm wrecked. Especially my feet, which have blisters on the tops and bottoms of both toes and are all cracked and gross. I think I got trench-foot (anyone want to make out?). It didn't help that the last night in La Paz I went out with this American guy who just got his residency at Yale medical school and wanted to take everyone out for drinks. I wasn't ready to sleep until 6am, and I was supposed to get up at 7am, so I watched like the middle third of the movie "The Incredibles" (which I have still never seen the end of, even though I've seen the beginning like 3 times now), did laundry, and then slept pretty much the whole day on the bus. And for the next two nights in Cusco I was dancing until the sun came up. Then we hit the Inca Trail (although I did actually sleep the night before we left), where we slept only 6 or 7 hours a night and never got enough food; after which Eric and I got a night bus to La Paz, which is never the best sleep. Our night in La Paz Eric and I slept 12 hours.

There's actually a lot of backstory before we get to the actual Trail. First, before we get off of partying, I need to mention how one night I came back to my room, which had one of those circular fluorescant lights in it, and it was flickering a lot but not actually turning on. So I tapped it - TAPPED it - with one finger a couple times, and the damn thing fell from it's fastenings and shattered into a million, mercury-laden pieces all over my floor. Great for coming out of the shower. But even better was that the same night, Jason came home and went into the room he was sharing with Eric, griping about how close he was to hooking up but there was some pushy English or German guy or something screwed him or some shit like that. Then he left the room. In the morning, Jason woke up in some other random room with no pants, not knowing how he got there or when his pants had come off. Later, our landlady lectured us about keeping the front door shut, which apparently hadn't happened the night before, and then she said something about Jason and kids; we weren't sure if there were kids in the room with Jason at some point who woke up and freaked out when they saw some gringo with no pants in their room, or if some street kids had come in during the night and slept in one of the rooms. Something like one of those things.

Eric was only in South America for 9 days, so we actually didn't have time to be wasting nights out partying, but the thing was that Jason booked our tour for the wrong day - Monday instead of Sunday. So we got to spend an extra night bumming free drinks from the Cusco clubs (they lure you in with free drinks, so if you barhop you can do pretty well), eating anticucho (cow heart on a stick, something I didn't know until after the fact, but it was pretty tasty) and searching out coca leaves for the trek. And then, on our last night before the trek when we had our orientation, we found out that it actually was a big deal that Eric had lost his student ISIC card in Lima (due to - guess what? - heavy drinking). I guess the agencies book tickets based on whether or not you're a student, and it's not as simple as just paying the extra $35 non-students pay. So we had to go to the tourist police, who supposedly would fill out a form for us saying that the card had been lost. But once we got there, it was obvious it was going to be bad news, because everyone we talked to (we talked to probably 4 different officers) all asked "why didn't you go back and get it? Why didn't you report it lost sooner?" (it had been two whole days since the card was lost). Basically they treated us like we were huge idiots because Eric would have rather made his flight to Cusco then go back to his hostel and look for his stupid card, which we figured got him a discount, not that it allowed him to go at all. So we got ushered into this office that was plastered with "don't sleep with under-age kids" posters, and sat at one officer's desk watching a slideshow of bikini-clad models in exotic, tropical locations while the two officers in the office bent over the other computer. Presumably they were doing something that had to do with us, but pretty quick we realized they were finishing up whatever it was they had been doing. Probably their spider solitaire game or something. So after a half-hour or so of waiting, one of the guys decided to talk to us, even though all he said was "why didn't you go back for your card? Why didn't you report it lost sooner? You have to go get a new one." Very helpful. We spent an hour or so looking for someone who could make us a fake one, but no luck (ironically, counterfeit ISIC cards are super easy to get in Asia, but they're not good for anything). So the next morning, when we were supposed to meet our group and head out on the bus at 8am, we were waiting for the ISIC office to open, which didn't happen until 9:30. Once we got in there, Eric's student ID wasn't enough to show he was a student, so we had to go print off his transcript and (of course) make copies of his passport.

I think we were on the road by 11am or so, in a private taxi to catch up with our group. Fortunately, this cab was a lot faster than the one Jason and I hired at Carnival, and we made pretty good time. Still though, we could tell the group had been waiting for us a while - a great first impression. The three of us kept our heads down and didn't talk much (outside of speculating how much the group hated us for holding up what is for most people a once-in-a-lifetime trip) while we ate our lunch. Things were made even better when we got to the control point at the entrance to the Inca Trail, and Eric's ISIC card number didn't match the one on his ticket (for some reason, Eric and I had tickets issued with our ISIC number, while Jason had a ticket issued with his passport number). So obviously what had to happen was we had to sit at the booth for an hour and a half or so, while Eric and the guides pleaded our case (and tried to see if there was some sort of "fine" that could be paid) and Jason and I could feel the group's hatred of us growing. I don't know why it took so long; it seems like they could either let Eric go or not, but after a lot of deliberation they decided they would let him go, but he needed a new ticket (why this solution didn't present itself 80 minutes earlier I'm not sure). So the guide had to go back to the village (just a short walk, at least), and call the agency to get a new ticket issued. By this time, the group had started hiking, and we had to hustle to catch up. Fortunately, that didn't present too much of a problem for our Alaskan legs and coca-filled mouths. But we were still pretty nervous to talk to people at first.

Here's how the Inca Trail runs: the first day is really mellow, mostly flat with a little bit of a climb at the end. Day two is the hardest, with something like 3500 feet in elevation gain. Day three also requires an ascent over a pass,but it's not as high, and most of the day is going back down. The fourth day is just a short hike in the morning to the ruins of Macchu Picchu. Half the day is spent in the ruins, then lunch in the town below, and then back on the train to Cusco.

Cross-Section of the Trail

This is the highest pass on the trail - 13,780 ft.

View from the top of the pass

The group- victorious at the top!



Other shots from the trail

Inca Cave
Purtty peaks
And then, all of a sudden, we found ourselves in Western Washington!
Northern Andean deer - these little buggars only live above 10,000 ft.

Just a couple of sexy guys we ran into along the trail.

Most of the heavy stuff is carried by porters (tents, food, gas tanks for cooking - big ones, too, 2.5 feet tall and a foot wide. One porter carries two tanks), and I think most of the people in our group had their things carried by porters, leaving just water for them to carry. Of course, as self-respecting Alaskans, Jason, Eric and I could do no such thing (even though we were just carrying sleeping bags, pads, clothes, snacks and water. I mean it was bad enough we already had some guy carrying our tents and food). And as you might expect, the porters are pretty burly guys: their calves are huge, and even with all the weight (I think the weight limit for porters is 80 pounds, which I'm pretty sure they all carry) they still scurry past all the gringos without a problem (they reach camp first and have everything set up when you get there). Our guide told us that the record for running the trail is 3:40.

The weather was less than great for our trek (it was rainy season after all. At least we didn't have trouble getting space on the trail - max 500 people a day, including porters and guides, and high season books up months in advance - and we only paid a third what you can pay in June). Generally, it would be raining when we woke up and went to bed, with a good several hours of sun inbetween. So not so bad, although all my stuff was pretty wet by the end of the second day, making the few hours of sun that much sweeter. The food was OK, although not great, and we were all still a little hungry even right after meals. The guides wake you up with mate in the morning though, which is pretty nice. And actually, the weather made for some cool moments: on the second night, we were camped under a starry sky at over 10,000 feet while thunderstorms raged in the clouds below us; another time, we were on Inca Trail that was etched into a really steep cliff, and just below us was a solid wall of mist - it looked like you could almost walk on it.

Even after all we put them through, our group was pretty fun. There were three Argentinians (who call each other "che" and talk funny - pollo becomes posho, for example), two English girls, three Dutch girls (of course, the attack of the ubiquitous Dutch), and an Israeli guy. The Israeli in our group I liked alright, even though he acted like a know-it-all (he spent several minutes explaining to Eric how to use his backpack belt) and was super-competitive ("I'm just trying to do the best I can. And if I beat everyone, that's good too"). He taught us a fun card game called yanev, which involves a lot of back-stabbing and enmity. It was interesting to hear him talk about how it's such an "Israeli" game, because it involves cutthroat competition and deceit. We had two games going, and whenever someone in the other circle would get upset, he would say "see, I love this game! It makes people hate each other!" On the second day, when we were ascending the high-point on the trail, the two of us were the first two up (we were both acclimated to the altitude already from living in La Paz). He said it was funny to watch other groups cheer on the people having a hard time, because in Israel everyone would say things like "come on, pussy! Hurry up!" (although he did admit this was a result of army life).

There are lots of ruins along the way, most of which I don't remember much about - and didn't learn much about anyways (so if you want to know more, the readers on Amazon.com seem to like Explore the Inca Trail, probably available in your local library. Maybe I should read it too, so I actually know about what I saw). My Spanish wasn't good enough to be with the Spanish group, and the English speaking guide didn't have very good English. In one ruin, someone asked if the layout of the ruin had any significance, which the guide didn't understand at first, and then he just said "no, it doesn't." Then I went over to the Spanish group, where the guide was just finishing up explaining about how the entire ruin was laid out like an Incan cross, with each point representing a certain deity. I thought that was kind of bullcrap - basically, I could have access to lots of information but not understand most of it, or understand everything but learn nothing. But there was one ruin where there was an administrative center, and several way-stations for Inca Trail runners, and several religious sites. All the ruins had terraced areas that created micro-climates for different crops; one ruin was even designed as an agricultural labratory where the Incas experimented with new potato cross-breeds and stuff.

Waypost for Inca runners

I forget what this is. Something, I'm sure.

This is the main administrative center of the valley. There was an observatory, and they had these lighthouses for signalling with fire - they would use a sheet of silvr or bronze as a mirror.



Most of the trail is original Inca Trail, even though the stonework is a lot shoddier than it must have been hundreds of years ago. I actually think it's really funny that when the Incans needed to send messages, they just sent some dude running as fast as he could down this really nicely paved network of stone highways. They only had to run less than a mile usually before they reached the next post, but still, humans are like the slowest animals on the planet. I mean, it's so funny that for all their advanced knowledge of astronomy and agriculture, the Incans never developed the wheel as a tool. So they could never, say, harness some llamas to a chariot or something (the first chariots were pulled by horses too small to ride, until selective breeding changed that).

The last day, the group wakes up and hikes to the Sun Gate to watch the sun rise - or, in our case, watch the mist shift around and the rain fall. The last day was the wettest, and I was soaked through most of it. Fortunately, once free-time came around, the sun was starting to come out and I got to dry off. That was also the time when the package tourists (the people that didn't hike the trail; they took the train from Cusco) arrived from Aguas Callientes, the little town built just for tourists at the bottom of Macchu Picchu. The Peruvian government only allows 500 people a day onto the trail, but I don't think there's any limit on the number allowed on the actual ruins. The groups were so large that the guides had these big, color-coded flags to lead them around.

That's right, it rained a lot at MP, and wasn't much fun. On the plus side, I found that water bottle unopened. And that thing costs like $9 at MP.

The main plaza as the sun starts to burn off the rain...

The Three Windows (actually, the one on the left isn't one of the three. The third is out of the frame). This was a temple in MP; one window for each main diety: snake, puma, and condor, representing the underworld, terrestrial world, and heavenly world, respectively.Jason showing his coolness in front of the Three Windows (in this case, the third window is behind the pillar).The Classic MP shot. I'm starting a poscard company.

This is the "Condor Rock" inside the Temple of the Condor

Agricultural terraces

This is an Inca Something. And the three of us just looking adorable!

The Inca Bridge, which runs along a different Inca Trail. You can't go on the bridge. But it looks like if they had had a little more time to fill in the gap, they wouldn't have needed those planks...

Inca Stairs

Me n Eric in a building that was probably for storing potatos or something

Inca House - those posts are for fastening the llama skin/thatch roofs to the buildings

The Three Amigos

I think this was a sacraficial area. Nice stonework, though.

OK, you know what? It was broken when I got there. And whatever happened Jason made me do for the sake of photography.

So yes, the ruins were spectacular and bizarre and amazing, although the huge groups of fanny pack-clad, crystal-white t-shirt sporting tourists took some of the mystery out of it. And then whatever mystery was left was lost completely when some guy got a call on his cell phone. It's funny, in my mind I imagined this totally lost wilderness through the valley (maybe because that's how it would be in Alaska), but people live in and farm the valley, still using the original Incan terraces and irrigation systems. It's not really that remote - no machete required.

After we were done at Macchu Picchu, the group was supposed to meet in a restaurant in Aguas Callientes, the little town built just for tourists at the bottom of Macchu Picchu. To get there, we (Eric, Jason and I) could either take a bus that took 30 or 40 minutes, or we could walk down the rock steps. I asked my friends if we could, as self-respecting hikers and Alaskans, really take a bus DOWN a hill. Of course the answer was no. Instead, we ran down the steps as fast as we could (which is why my calves were so sore the next day), making the journey to town in about an hour - although we stopped for about 10 minutes to talk to some Alaskans we met on the way (thanks to one of the girls sporting a "Alaskan Amber" fleece).

In the restaurant, we were charged American prices for Peruvian service; our drinks didn't come until the end of our meal, even though we asked about them a couple times, and I didn't get my meal until a half-hour after everyone else had finished. When I finally asked, our waitress told me that I had already eaten, and we got into an argument about whether or not I had gotten my lunch. Eventually, she said "oh, hold on," and came back a minute later with a plate of ice-cold food. Then, at the end, she added a service charge to each of our checks. Bienvenidos a restaurantes de Suramerica, I guess. The food was mediocre.


Like I said, after MP Eric and I took a night bus back to La Paz (Jason had to go back to Chile), with plans to ride the "World's Most Dangerous Road" before Eric had to turn around back to Cusco to catch his flight to Lima and then home. But we ended up doing NOTHING in Bolivia. I felt bad for Eric and I think he was kind of pissed off (I would have been). We got here and had two days/one night basically - one day to book the tour and hang out, and one day to do the ride. But we wouldn't have gotten back from the Death Road until 8pm, and there were no busses back to Peru after that, no flights to Cusco (only one to Lima for like $300), and he couldn't have left the next day because it's a 12-hour bus (first bus at 8am) and his flight left at 2pm. Basically, we had to get him back to Peru on that second day. Oh, and we couldn't get a later flight out of Cusco for him. Pretty much we went to bed super early his one night here because we were both really tired; I took him out for Pique Macho, probably the only typical Bolvian food I think is really tasty. It's chunks of steak, red onion, tomatos, and potatos. We went to this place called "Dumbo's," which is an ice cream parlor that doubles as a pretty fancy restaurant - they had a live piano player. They also had a 8 by 10 foot wall of stained glass, a pretty complex piece of peacocks - and then they slapped four fluorescant tubes behind it, so it was really bright right by the tubes, and dark at the center. Just one of those things that baffles me about this place: why spend so much money on a nice piece of art and then not spring for decent lighting for it? I mean, it really looked like shit.

So we spent the whole first day trying to figure out how to do the Death Road. Oh, and we bought bootleg DVDs, and we saw an air force parade (hooray!). The second day was blown just trying to figure out how to get Eric back to Cusco - we couldn't even find him a bus in the afternoon (eventhough when we were first looking for night buses on day one we both heard people say there were 2pm and 4pm buses), so I had to put him in a share taxi to Desaguadero and then he was going to take local buses to Puno and then Cusco. He seemed not so happy about having to do that (he speaks no Spanish at all, although I gave him a phrasebook and wrote some stuff down for him), but there was no other way. But hey, that's a good Bolivia experience I think, local transport... he lived, at any rate.

So that was my MP/Alaska friends experience.