Before I headed for Arequipa I almost got stuck in La Paz because the roads from La Paz to Copacabana were being blocked by bus drivers protesting for better insurance. Every other day they would temporarily allow some traffic through and of course the ticket price increased. In the bus from Copacabana to Arequipa (around 9 hours) I met Therese, a very interesting Norwegian girl, who was traveling around South America for half a year, learning Spanish. That made the bus trip seem a lot shorter :) Therese and I got along so well that we ended up doing all of [View Full Entry]

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So on the way from Copacabana to La Paz all of a sudden the bus driver barks at everybody to get off! It turned out that we needed to take a 15 minute speedboat ride across Titicaca (although didn't turn out to be so speedy after all since we experienced engine troubles) as the bus and our luggage were transported by a different vessel. Hilarious! Except nobody mentioned this at the ticket office in Puno. The tourists that did not speak Spanish were completely confused. Then once you cross the lake you have to find your bus in among the many [View Full Entry]

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Most people who come to Copacabana take a trip to the nearby Isla del Sol , a very important site in indigenous mythology. The island has been identified as the birthplace of several deities, including the sun, the bearded white god-king Viracocha, and Manco Capac and his sister/wife Mama Ocllo (the first Incas). Most modern-day Aymará and Quechua peoples of Peru and Bolivia accept these legends as their creation story. The majority of the island’s 2,500 permanent residents are situated in the north and south parts of the islands that contain the main tou [View Full Entry]

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The original reason for my whole South Peruvian trip was exit Peru as my tourist visa was about to expire (90 days). I crossed the frontera on January 1, 2008, the last day I was ‘allowed’ to be in Peru. Generally, the rule is that if you overstay your tourist visa, then you have to pay $1 for every extra day that you stayed, which is reasonable. However, corruption is a lucrative business in Latin America so you never know how much you might get stuck with paying. So I caught a bus from Puno (Peru) to Copacabana (Bolivia), which included [View Full Entry]

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So in Cusco Jore and I got on a night bus to go Lake Titicaca. We were headed straight to Copacabana, a little resort town on the Bolivian side. However, once the bus got to Puno, a city on Lake Titicaca near the border with Bolivia, we realized that Jore’s carry-on backpack was missing! All of Jore’s most important things were in it, including her passport, camera (with Machu Picchu photos!!), cell phone, and all her money! Since it had obviously been stolen and we couldn’t cross the border without her passport we got off the bus and went to the [View Full Entry]

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As Jore and I wanted to experience Machu Picchu fully we gave ourselves two full days for it. We were planning to buy our train tickets individually but since it was the day after Christmas the tickets were sold out! Our only remaining option was to go with a tour operator, costing $150 (covering transportation, entrance fees, and a guide), which surprisingly turned out quite well. So on March 26th, early in the morning our tour lady came to the hotel to pick us up and took us to our bus which was transporting other tourists from different companies as well. [View Full Entry]

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So it’s finally time to update you on my big trip around the south of Peru. First stop: Cusco - the oldest continuously-inhabited city of the Americas and the capital of the Inca Empire! After a 22 hour bus ride (yes, you read right, 22!!) Jore and I arrived to Cusco in the late afternoon of March 24th. There we met up with Dries and Kristine and we all had a lovely Christmas Eve dinner along with Marion and Cedric (also volunteers at the Casa). We had done a Secret Santa among the six of us, so after the food we [View Full Entry]

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So while I am writing my travel experiences, there will be a couple of entries that backtrack, but I hope you enjoy them anyway. A bunch of events connected with the Casa Hogar that were quite neat :) * A few weeks ago, Walter, an American Christian missionary, and his wife organized a Comida Mexicana to benefit the Casa. Many Peruvians, as well as many volunteers, showed up and we ate yummy tacos. My personal highlight was the brownies that the wife made with real walnuts. They were exquisite. * On the week of her birthday, I decided to take one [View Full Entry]

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The following are a bunch of random collection of ‘happenings’ and observations in my daily life in Ayacucho/Vista Alegre. Throughout my days here I keep making mental notes of what I need to mention in my blog (because there are so many things that are just plain weird here!) so I might repeat some of the things from previous blog entries - too lazy to backtrack. * In Vista Alegre there isn’t much of publicly offered waste management. Allegedly there a garbage truck passes through the neighborhood once a week but I have yet to see it. So the garbage is [View Full Entry]

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1st off - There are no dogs on the streets!! What a relief! (although there are none in Ayacucho either, it’s just in Vista Alegre/Carmen Alto). 2nd off - The shopping is unbelievable!! Honestly, I am a city girl at heart and I am at my best in shopping malls. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t planning or expecting to spend two days at a mall, but the family that I was staying with (more particularly the mom and the brothers) didn’t feel comfortable letting me roam Lima alone and taking taxis alone (for fear of being kidnapped and what [View Full Entry]

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