Day 1(technically, according to JR's website)--Travel. Brevard-> Atlanta, Atlanta-> Miami's sketchy airport, Miami-> La Paz. I was stuck between to Bolivian men: to my left someone who appeared to be a business man, on my right a very angry, antisocial young man. I spoke to neither of them until I was forced to ask the business man what time it was locally. At least he was nice, and didn’t smell. We arrived Early morning on Day 2 (like 5am or something US time)
Day 2--Ridiculously early arrival in the La Paz airport. We were greeted by Rose Mary, Raphael and Silvia in a rainbow colored bus. Cigarettes smoked longer, lighters didn't work. There was a Burger King at the airport, not that any of us were stupid enough to go there. The hotel was amazing, Nicole, Emily and I were on the 2 nd or 3 rd floor (it wasn’t really clear) in a lovely room with a balcony that overlooked a busy side street. Early that morning I experienced my first warm South American beverage, which would have otherwise been cold in the US, and coca tea, the later tasted like moist earth. We crashed at the hotel for a while, went on a tour of the city in the afternoon. Jay and Nicole got Emily and I lunch for around $.25 American. We went to the Valley of the Moon and saw that guy playing pan pipes for American tourist money. There were dogs everywhere, on the side of the road, in the road...everywhere. I even saw an Old English sheepdog. I think we probably went shopping, I know I translated for someone, or many. We went to the bar across from our hotel that night--all Brevard College. They bar-woman played some Nirvana for us, and finally one or two locals showed up and laughed at us. We tried our first Coca leaves, and plenty of cheap Bolivian liquor.
Day 3-- Tiwanaku. Before entering the site we participated in a ceremony where we got the coca leaf bags, said something to the four corners of the Earth, as well as the levels of the Earth, and other things that I should really remember, then went on to the site. There, I had my first experience of difficulty breathing w/o oxygen, saw a llama, witnessed the magnetism of some rocks, Baslaugh found gold, Emily found pottery shards. Jay, Emily and I got horribly sun burnt because we're stupid. We ate lunch at a tiny restaurant next to train tracks with some sheep tied to something like a railroad track outside. They were not happy sheep, and made much baahhhing protesting when we approached them. We visited the archeology and geology museums near the site...they had skulls with cranial deformation, mummies, pottery shaped like cats and llamas, etc. We ate dinner at the hotel again, which had a terrible Shiraz, and met up with a tour guide or something to go to the disco-tech. At the hostel next door the Carnival we followed throughout Bolivia and Peru was still swinging, complete with costumed matrons in bowler hats, sexually-obsessed men dressed as clowns, and festive music. You can see pictures of this on my webpage. The disco-tech had a name that referred to Zeus or Poseidon; cover was about $.75 American. Older women were the stars there. They taught many of the girls, including Nicole, Emily, Sammy and I a thing or two about Bolivian dancing. There was an awesomely creepy man who proclaimed that his country was hugging us with his arms, Bolivia loved us and thus he loved us too. We tried to avoid him.
Day 4-- Road to Copacabana. We arrived in the afternoon, ate lunch at a cute little place that served Omelets for vegetarians. Always omelets. Emily's debit card was stolen. We had the boat ride from hell to the Island of the Sun. On the boat we tried to figure out which little dot on the island was our hotel. Much to our initial dismay, it was indeed the dot you couldn’t really see on the very top of the island. No, it wasn’t actually; it was higher up than that. So we all hiked up the island to our hotel, which took a while (for the whole group to get there). Of course the experienced WLEE majors got there first. Emily served as a cheerleader. Rose Mary passed out “oxygen,” which we guessed was a type of sagebrush. There were donkeys outside everywhere. They were generally quite skittish, but came around after I attempted to force-feed them some sad looking hay. After exploring our hotel and being quite excited about our awesome bathrooms, we went to dinner at a sketchy non-electric place where Jay may have gotten the salmonella. Jay lead Emily and I back to the hotel, but not before she started shrieking "It's a thing! It's a thing!" and trying to climb up him for safety. The thing was a donkey. We saw the Southern Cross and found out that once you flushed the toilet, there was no water. No water. Later we learned it had been cut off after dark, not that we were informed beforehand. That night our room had some very strange sleeping experiences (especially Nicole).
Day 5--Hiked down the island, went to the fountain of youth where almost everyone said “the hell with it” and drank. It actually felt quite nice on burned skin. I'm not so sure where all we went, but we did go to the island of the moon for about 10 minutes. We drove to Copacabana after super-long boat rides again, to our hotel in what must have been the highest point of the city…where we could see everything. We all felt weird at dinner and passed out early.
Day 6—We all got up and went to breakfast. Jay looked like hell and apparently felt like it too. Yeah so we all went shopping while he tried not to die and laughed that indeed there were Brazilian hippies hanging around the city, selling jewelry, just like people do in Asheville. Of course there they aren’t Brazilian. We got on a bus and headed towards Peru. It was on this ride that we hit the sheep/dog, which is still being heavily debated. So we arrived in Puno, Peru and boarded our horrible cama bus where Emily and I froze to death and met a horrible couple from Vermont. The wife/lover/dominant-female-figure decided that pounding her legs on the floor of the upper deck (presumably right above the driver) and shouting “Vamanos Senor!” would really help us get moving, especially when the driver wasn’t even in the bus. Emily and I froze to death in the front of the bus. Early in the morning I awoke to an empty seat next to me, and scary, mean-looking official men, maybe boarder patrol or customs or something, walking around the bus looking at everyone and going through our belongings underneath. I figured they stole Emily, but no, she was underneath my feet on the floor of thus bus. She sat up just in time for me to tell her to duck again, and wasn’t seen at all by the officials, who probably would have freaked out and thought she was a stow-away. It was really funny at the time, I guess you had to be there.
Day 7 --We got the hell out of the bus in Cuzco around 4:30 am. WE found our luggage, which has been searched, crammed into some vans, and crashed at the hotel. We didn't move until we had to take a city tour. I don't remember much, but Jay was beyond sick, and we were all really tired. I think we went around to different archaeological sites, because I seem to remember we followed another group around all day, and met “Papaya.”
Day 8--We went to Machupichu. There we met “Frenchie” and “Mango.” I took my first train ever, which was ridiculously exciting. I don’t remember the name of the town outside of Machupichu, but it was really cute. Things were more expensive in Peru. Apparently, the mountain didn’t want us to climb it, it wasn’t speaking to us. J.R. pointed out evidence of a landslide. It was awesome. Oh, did I mention that that morning we saw a headline that read in Spanish, “Female tourist dies at Machupichu”?
Day 9--We took a lightening speed tour of archeological sites minus Jay, Emily, Nicole and later Sammy. Pretty much everyone was getting sick. We were getting a little tired of washing our toothbrushes out with bottled water, but had gotten quite used to not flushing our toilet paper. We saw a massive white Jesus on a hill. Not at all creepy… I think we took a cama bus that night...?
Day 10-- Drama on the bus. Everyone came alive again in La Paz. We were reunited with Rose Mary and Silvia, and did more than our fair share of shopping. We had a party that night....where we met “Pineapple,” and danced, and drank, and ate, and hoped the salad we couldn’t stop eating wouldn’t make us sick. We stayed out late and got up way too early.
Day 11 —Travel. Customs sucked. The only way I got through was by acting like I had to follow Jay because he was my father or something. He got through saying he had to get to his wife. Kyle picked us up from the airport; we got back to campus around 12:30. I pretty much died. And was sick for quite a few days.
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