A Condor mask in the Ethnography and Folklore Museum.

I have been woefully lax in writing my blog on our stay in La Paz…very unfair to a great  city.

Entering the city from the high altiplano, passing through the immense surrounding town, slum, metropolis of El Alto (1.5 million people) to arrive at the edge of the bowl La Paz fills is a sight I will always remember.  We dropped 400m into a very traffic filled, pedestrian busy, chaotic,  hilly city in the late afternoon and David skillfully steered us towards our hotel where we would spend 5 relaxing days.  La Paz is a city of colorful markets, a feast for the eyes.  Everywhere street vendors filled the sidewalks.  Tourist handicrafts spilled over onto the sidewalks from storefronts.  Among the more interesting markets was the “Witches Market” where llama fetuses (and many other oddities) could be bought to put under the thresholds of new homes for prosperity.

We enjoyed great restaurants and meeting great people (Louisa and Christian from Casa de Ciclistas and  JeanBaptist and Carina, the lovely French couple we had met in Isla del Sol…to name a few).  Another highlight was the coca museum.  We know coca as the “evil” drugs, cocaine and crack, that fuel the drug violence and are so devastating in the lives of people addicted.  The coca leaf and its uses have been around for as long as people have lived in this part of the world.  It is commonly used throughout the Andes as a mild stimulant just as people drink coffee in the US.  People chew the leaves or steep them in a tea.  It reduces the effects of altitude sickness, travelers’ diarrhea, and a host of other ailments, most verified by modern science.  In this form it is not the harmful cocaine or crack.  The US supports programs to eradicate the plant from farmers fields in its war on drugs, but it is very much a part of life here.  The museum was an interesting and informative experience on the history, culture, politics and economy of this controversial plant.

Linares Street is also called "the witches market"...

...where you can buy a llama fetus.

The coca museum is an eye-opener.

reCyclist trying on a feather headdress from the Amazon region of Bolivia.

Reed-covered wooden boat at Huatajata.

We’ve been waking up with slight headaches and felt weak cycling this morning on the altiplano at 3800m.  Julie considered taking a bus into La Paz, but after a snack of fruit and nuts we both felt stronger and continued cycling through rain and hail (for only about 5 km).  La Paz  (3660m) is in a bowl lower than the altiplano, beneath a range of snow-capped peaks rising to over 6,000m.  The traffic in this city of 1.5 million seems much calmer than in other large South American cities.  I wonder if that is because there is a higher percentage of indigenous people here.

Friendly pre-teens Blanca, Janet, Caterina in Batalles.

We left under the threat of rain on one of our best bike rides yet; made better by a ferry strike.  For two days travellers have been going around Lake Titicaca, through Peru, to get to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia.  There are plans to build a bridge across a narrow straight on this great lake providing a quicker route.  The locals don’t want the bridge because it will end the ferry service that now provides the livelihood for the town with a fare of twenty cents per person.  Rumors circulated that the strike might end this afternoon, and if not, we could wait there until tomorrow.  Almost no vehicles passed us on the smooth, new pavement that climbed to high views over Titicaca and it’s smaller bay to the south.  I wondered if we might meet violent strikers when we encountered large trees that had been cut down to block the roadway.  We found four other tourists (2 Brits & 2 Spaniards) waiting at the dock at 1:30 who said the strike may end at two.  At 3:30 we loaded onto a small boat (which briefly stalled and floundered in the middle of the straight) that took us across.  A dedicated teacher swam the half kilometer in 10ºC water (50ºF) this morning.  We are staying at a hostel owned by Max Catari, an Aymara Indian who has helped resurrect the ancient art of reed boat building.  His museum contains replicas of Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki and Ra expeditions and several more recent grand expedition boats that he helped build.  His neighbors now make wooden boats covered in reeds for the tourist trade, because reed boats last only 5 or 6 months before rotting.  The Kon-Tiki was made of balsa wood, but the Ra is a type of reed boat that is called a balsa here, and does not contain balsa wood.

Will we pass through that narrow gap?

Our second day in Bolivia was spent on an island in Lake Titicaca that according to Inca legend is the birthplace of the Inca people. The island is small and can easily be walked in a few hours from the north end to the south end where people are settled. We chose to stay on the less populated north end because there was no long stairway leading from the dock to the town like in the south end which would be difficult with loaded bicycles. I was happy with our choice as we met four young French tourists in our hostel, Marina, Emanuele, Carina and JeanBaptist with whom we spent some time having dinner, picking out constellations in an unfamiliar southern night sky, and watching the sunrise from the middle of a farmer’s field.

There are two main Inca ruins on the island. In the north is the area considered the birthplace where a large rock marks the spot where the first Inca peoples came out of an opening in the earth. In the south is the Temple of the Sun. Our plan was to ride our bikes from north to south and back again. We were assured by several people this was doable, but we would need to walk our bikes up a rocky path to the top of the hill. An English man who lived for several years on the island making his living selling crafts told us the road was even paved at the top of the hill. After pushing our bikes up the long hill, carrying them over rocky stairs and rocky paths we did find a paved road, but it was an old Inca road, paved with uneven stones, a great road, but an unpleasant surface for our bikes. We decided to leave them locked nearby and due to lack of time, to shorten our tour to just the north side ruins.

The ruins consisted of a rocky outcropping marking the birthplace of the Inca’s and a very cool labyrinth of rooms, built with stones. The best part, however, was the view. Many, many ancient agricultural terraces stood out on the hills below us, no longer used on this sparcely populated island, suggesting a much larger population lived here centuries ago. The high snowy peaks of the Cordillera La Paz appeared from the clouds at the far end of the lake, glowing in the late afternoon sun. The deserted landscape of the island, golden now at the end of the day, set in the blue, blue waters of the immense lake was beautiful.

We stayed in a hostal on the beach in Challapampa.

The Inca roads here (with steps!) are no good for road bikes.

The Incas did not use wheeled transportation.

We found (& left behind) pottery shards.

Petr, a serbian tourist, took our photo at the northern tip of Isla del Sol.

This stonework seems older & less impressive than other Inca ruins.

Some think the lost city of Atlantis is near here.

Snow-capped peaks of the Cordillera La Paz rise across Titcaca.

Evening rush hour on the Inca road.

Sunrise over Isla de la Luna.

This boy came to admire my Cruzbike.

Challapampa harbor at dawn.

Our French friends Emmanuel, Marina, Jean Baptiste, & Carina.

This dragon-headed balsa (reed boat) is very stable.

I tried poling in the murky shallows.

Copacabana harbor

We paid $135 each for visas to enter Bolivia after cycling 3,500 km in two months through Perú.  European tourists pay nothing.  Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, a former coca grower and the country’s first indigenous president, is no friend of the US.  The US wants to eradicate Bolivia’s coca fields; even though most of the population chews coca leaves and we, too, eat coca candy to alleviate symptoms of altitude sickness.  We’d be in big trouble if we brought this coca candy back to the US.  Bolivia expelled the US ambassador, and John Matson also sold his house here and moved to Lima, Perú five years ago.  A low-paid border official also asked for an extra $5 to process our papers, but relented when I said no.  Copacabana is full of tourists, but we meet only one other American here.

Titicaca sunset over Isla del Sol from Copacabana.

I’ve been putting an accent on the “u” in Perú.  I didn’t know that before arriving in Perú; and even here on official signs and symbols it is often barely perceptible or even omitted. We spent an extra day in Puno to post dozens of photos on this site; but due to a spotty internet signal only added photos to the Puno post. The signal was working fine this morning before we checked out. Our last day in Perú was spent cycling along the shore of Lake Titicaca at the beginning and end of the day.  We met French cyclists Paul and Ophelia (siblings), on a 20,000 km world tour with 40-year-old motorized bicycles.  Ophelia’s motor is not working well, so they are pedalling slowly to La Paz where they will fly to Los Angeles to have it repaired. They are staying with the Nuns here next to a fine old Dominican church on a hill overlooking Lake Titicaca.  We are staying at the only hospedaje in town with no water for showers.  Many towns around here have water only in the mornings due to low water levels.  I take a cold bucket bath anyway to wash off sweat.

Boats near the Uros reed islands on Lake Titicaca.

Dominican church at Pomata

Large stone blocks form chullpas, funerary towers, at Sillustani.

Julie crawls inside the burial chamber.

Lake Titicaca, at 3800m, is the world’s highest navigable lake and the largest lake in South America.  It is shared by Peru and Bolivia; and, as a Peruvian pointed out, most maps give the “Titi” to Peru and the “caca’ to Bolivia.  Our first view was of a dry lake bed.  The NW half of Puno Bay is dry; perhaps the upcoming rainy season will raise the water level. A parade for Puno Days blocked the way to our hotel.  During a lull, we made our way through the crowd and found a 3-star hotel with Wi-Fi for a low-season rate.  We placed a Skype phone call to my Mom on her birthday.

Alicia (7) & alpaca nose in Atuncolla.

This boy ran to see me when I stopped along the road to take a photo of his house.

This side of Lake Titicaca is dry.

Stone houses with thatched roofs in Atuncolla

Andean flamingos in flight.

Large flocks of flamingos on the bleak altiplano.

We are feeling a little weakness and shortness of breath at this altitude.  We’ll be at around 3800m (12,500′) for most of this month, and did spend a week acclimatising in Cusco at 3400m before dropping below 3000m in the Sacred Valley.  We thought the rainy season had started early when we were in Cusco, but since then have stayed pretty dry.  Rain threatens almost every day but the rainy season shouldn’t start until December, by which time we hope to be through Bolivia and off the altiplano. The terrain has been very flat as the road follows a meandering river in a wide valley.  Flocks of flamingos are common and we’ve seen another large bird with a curved beak feeding on dry land that, from a distance, I first thought might be a condor.

Ceramic toritos on rooftops for good luck in Pucara.

Darwin holding a baby alpaca at Abra La Raya.

Their moms also pose for tourists.

We’ve been following the Sacred Valley for 250 km from Machu Picchu Pueblo (at 2000m) and today’s 700m climb up to 4338m Abra La Raya. One bus of Czech tourists and one French busload were more interested in taking photos of us than the Alpacas posing at the top of the pass. We coasted down the other side onto the 3800m high, treeless altiplano, or high plain, that stretches 1000 km into Bolivia. Aymara is the indigenous language spoken here; while Quechua, the language of the Incas, is spoken in the Andean highlands on the other side of the pass and all the way through Peru into Ecuador. We’ve met indigenous people who don’t speak Spanish.

Day of the Dead fiesta in the cemetery at Checacupe.

We had trouble finding a breakfast place open before 8 am;  though some people are drinking in bars.  Have they been drinking all night?  This is The Day of the Dead and businesses are closed as many people travel to visit the graveyard of their ancestors. Rafael cycled for 5k with us. He’s biked for two days to get to his hometown.   We visited the Inca ruins of Raqchi to see remains of the Temple of Viracocha.  It was one of the holiest shrines in the Inca Empire; and one of the largest, covering an area the size of a football field.

The Temple of Viracocha at Raqchi.