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Published: November 29th 2007
Her name was Lizzie, she was a showgirl....
Alright enough of that, you know that leads to me wearing a diamond. We had a few days before Brandon and Nocelyn showed up in Peru, so we decided to spend some time in Bolivia basking on the shores of Lake Titicaca, which happens to be the highest navigable lake in the world. Not sure what that means, but we did learn that almost the highest everything in the world resides in Bolivia.
We took the world´s slowest boat with some great British girls to Isla del Sol a few miles across the lake. The Inca´s believed that this island was the birthplace of the sun and it was pretty easy to see why as the sun scorched us all day. The lake sits around 12,000 feet so sunscreen is essential everywhere here. The boat dropped us off on the north end of the island and we spent the day walking to the south end of the island to be picked up again by the boat. We explored inca ruins, had a delicious ritz cracker lunch, and then found the perfect place to have a beer at the end of the
trail. We keep running into people in different countries that we have seen or met before. Here we ran into a Czech woman that we had come across in the bone crypts of Lima a few weeks earlier. Creepy. We had a quick rinse off in the fountain of youth to make sure that we live forever and then jumped on the slowboat back to Copacabana. After an hour or so of going 0.2 mph I decided drinking from the fountain was a bad idea because we wanted to throw ourselves overboard.
We stayed at an awesome hotel called the Cupula that was as nice as a mediteranean resort but only cost $14 per night. The local specialty in town is trout from the lake, so we tried trout served every which way. Stuffed, baked, fried, grilled, with sauce and without. It was all so delicious and as hard as we tried we could not spend more than 4 dollars on our meal. Bolivia is reeeaaallly cheap.
The local cathedral had two really neat things to see. The first was the candle chapel with was a little side chapel off the side of the cathedral. It was completely
blackened from years of candle smoke and the floors were covered with wax. The locals come here and light candles for each prayer that they say. Often the wax is formed into the shape of a house or a car and put on the wall as a way of asking god to provide these things for them in the coming year. The second interesting thing we saw, which occurs twice daily for all the busy commuters was the blessing of the cars. If a family is leaving for a long road trip or have not had the old Toyota blessed in a while they can pull up to the church at 10 and 3 when the priest comes up and douses the car and the drivers and passengers with holy water. A little of the sacred stuff is even put in the radiator to the keep the car running cool. Before he comes out, the owners pile all kinds of flowers and decorations on the car for the ceremony. When I return I am going to be at the corner of Speer and Colfax blessing cars for 3 bucks a pop if you need to find me.
Until then,
The hilltop family shrines
Each family has a shrine where the come to pray. it is time to make a return trip to Peru to see our fam and friends! We piled onto the bus with the bowler hat clad indigenous ladys, who very much resemble bowling balls. They also love to bounce side to side down the aisles of the bus knocking down each pinhead who doesnt get out of their way.
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YFA
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overcome by pangs of jealousy
It's been awhile since one of the photos filled me with extreme envy and jealousy, but I was overcome by the shot "an afternoon cerveza". But don't feel bad, I'll go back to my desk at work tomorrow and forget all about it.