MaryBohan

Huaraz is located about 400km north of Lima, in a large valley in between the Cordillera Negra and Cordillera Blanca mountain ranges. The largest mountain in Peru, Mt. Huascaran (6768m!), is nearby in the Cordillera Blanca, and there's dozens of other peaks of almost as impressive size. Thus, this area is the hiking capital of Peru. On that information alone I headed up into the mountains from Lima: I had no specific plans when I got there, except to visit the ruins called, like the culture whose capital they were, Chavín. Chavín is the mama of Peruvian cultures - this site, considered the capital, dates to 1200bc (I think). Items of Chavín design were found throughout the north of Perú, up until around 100bc. But they started out right here, in the geographical center of the ... read more

Right, everyone, I had this all updated, was just going to finish it up, but now suddenly the server informs me that it has lost my last 3 entries. Horrible! So now this update of the last three months will have to be even briefer, as I'm trying to finish it before I catch a train in 3 hours. Around mid-April I went to the Comunided Río Azul, which I found using www.organicvolunteers.org (great website, by the way). I had no idea what to expect when I turned up and what I found was Alex, who is my age, from Indonesia by way of American parents. He and his brother and some friends have bought this incredibly beautiful piece of land just outside the town of EL Bolsón on the Río Azul. I say "just outside ... read more

NOTE, PLEASE: The photos here were not taken by me. The Oruro Carnival photos are from Irish Guy (my friend Karl, who didn't know this: "Jeez, Mary, you took a lot of pictures of girls' legs.") The Salt Flats pictures are Ben-from-England's. Many thanks to them. For my first South American carnival, I was determined to go somewhere particularly interesting. I set my sights on Oruro, on the Bolivian altiplano (altitude 3702 meters), whose festival, La Diablada, is renowned for its combination of traditional and Christian imagery and practices. Mostly, though, I had seen pictures of the costumes, and couldn't imagine missing it. So, I paid something like $30 a night for a hotel room (I mention this because the normal rate in Bolivia, for the budget accomodation I prefer, is about $2), and arrived ... read more

All right, you people harrasing me for more blogging, here you go... this one will sum up the last month, during which I have been all over Bolivia... I spent my 3-ish days in La Paz trying to leave La Paz, which now seems very silly. I was on my way somewhere, you see, had a mission. And so I didn't really do enough... all of which only means, I have to visit again... The funnest part of my time in La Paz was definitely the friends I made. I was staying at a hostel called El Lobo. A strange place - everything was written in Hebrew, the desk help was very surly, and the top floor housed a bar containing everything you could ever wish for in a bar - except it had the worst ... read more

...unless you are a Bolivian child or my friend Karl from California, who insists it "wasn't that bad." Copacabana is a resort town on a peninsula on the southwestern side of Lake Titicaca, just across the border from Perú. My first South American border crossing was uneventful, despite persistent rumors floating amongst the traveller population that a new Bolivian policy requires that American citizens pay for a visa/pay an entry fee/pay a bribe cunningly disguised as an "entry fee". None of these turned out to be true, though I was scolded by two very serious border guards for the miserable condition of my passport (I keep it in my money belt strapped under my pants, and I don't care if it looks like I sleep on it (I do)... I still have it, don't I?) My ... read more

- Machu Picchu, meaning "Old Peak" in Quechua, located about 70 km from Cusco, is thought to have been built around 1440 ad. - Machu Picchu spreads in total over 5 square miles, with over 3000 stone steps linking the various levels. - Machu Picchu remained unknown to the modern world until 1911, when Hiram Bingham "discovered" the ruins (there are records of numerous others visiting the place during the modern era, including a graffito carved into the base of the Temple of the Sun from 1909. Also, Bingham wasn't just wandering the tall, pointy mountains in this region by himself, for kicks - he was looking for Inca ruins, and was led to this site by the locals, to whom it was well known). - Machu Picchu is the Number One Tourist Attraction in South ... read more