I am doing that country a terrible injustice but I really need to catch up to the present. I have been in peru nearly two months now. And I should get bolivia finished with. Its an incredibly varied country wiht immense amounts of shit to do. Considering they don´t have an ocean (stolen by the chileans in a long ago war and you´ll hear about it too) it has almost everything. A navy even operates on the amazingly beautiful lake titicaca.
I travelled by bikes and then power canoes from the cordilleras (the climatic zone between the andes and amozon) all the way down into the basin proper. It was an amazing trip. Flourescent iridescent blue butterflies floated over the river. Spider monekey and birds and even a squirrel played in the trees. I managed to save my bag carrying my only money card, and my passport, and all my information books, and the novel to console me if anything bad happens as it was halfway through its flight toward the rapids. We finished up the tour in a place called rurrenebaque where I saw almost more widelife just haning out in the town with the 8 year old chilean boy whose accent I simply could not understand.
From there I embarked on the most amibitious travelling I have undertook. A wonderful function of the spanish langauge is sometthing called a diminutivo, or diminuative. It allows you to make anything smaller sinply by adding ito or ita to the word. Casa being house casita then becomes little house, or hut. Brilliant. Me and an exceptionally tiny and really grear english girl decided to try to take a boat through the jungle up river through the middle of the country. This involved first a two day trip to another city, and when I mentioned our plan to a lovely kiwi couple we intreped travellers four set out. And it was brilliant. The cargo port informed us there was no boats going the way we wanted for the best part of 2 months so we just trecked it in shared taxi vans called truphies and the odd bus. We travelled the whole bolivian lowlands. Seeing maccaws sloths, swimming in a local amozonian tributary swimming hole and finding the large and very isolated german mennoite population. We ate lard stew for breakfast and got food poisoning from a market. the food was delicious and cheap though so we kept coming back.
My tiny and female hence amigita, freind and I decided to go to Santa cruz. The capital of bolivias biggest department, bolivias biggest and richest city and the center of the movement cede from bolivia. I loved the city. two weeks out from winter solstice there were mangos budding on trees and people playing chess in the central plaza in t shirts at 3 in the morning. Cruceñas are freindly and welcoming. I had such a brilliant time introducing claire as mi amigita clara, and it was appreciated so much by the bolivians and I was asked where are you from so often that I said it 5 times a day. Mi amigita and I are still on great terms. She just got engaged in california!
I then went through Bolivias second capital, judicial as opposed to governmental. And if you listen to the residents, the real capital. And it certainly feels that way. The buildings are all bone white. Incredibly pretty parks and architecture. There is a sense of quiet progress in the town. Its beautiful.
From there back to La Paz and to Tiwinaku (some pre incan ruins) for the winter soltice. And ancient party. And cold. over 4000 metres above sea level on the shortest night of the year. My thick poncho and te con te (whisky with te. A brilliant euphemism) weren´t enought to keep me warm. The first rays of the andean new year struck my outheld hands in possibly the site of the oldest human civisillation. Sadly very little research has been done and we know nothing about the culture that created the carvings and buildings once standing there.
From there I left by way of lake titicaca. 4000 metres above sea level. And massive. Like an inland sea. I´m sure its bigger than some european nations (they are all so poxy small aren´t they?). The clearset coldest water. Red mountains. Trout. A dark night sky. I stayed on the isla del sol, the birth place of the sun in Incan mythology. They are without elecricity on the north part of the island and I had warm tomato soup and met a french freind. She and I caught the bus into Peru together the next day.
And that is a horribly abridged vesrion of events up until two months ago. Expect more like this soon when I come to write of peru. For now deccasout!
