Greasing the wheels of commerce

There’s no way around it, we getting screwed.  We’ve arrived at the bus terminal at 7:50am, just 10 minutes ahead of our proposed bus to Cuzco.  Our hotel manager has passed off to another short, very serious man who is explaining to Dee that there is no room on the bus until the evening; that is unless we want to take another – presumably inferior – bus. 

I hope you dance!

A band of 5 teens playing guitar, mini-banjo, and flutes provided the music and when they started so did the dancing.  Hepolito and Deonicia quickly bead a track over to us and we were dancing  Performing at times a quasi jig, at others a conga line of 40 people it was a tiring pace.  While Hepolito soon made his way to the sidelines, Deonicia  (and us) did not miss a song.  Her and I made an improbable dance partnership and our 2.5-foot differential brought many laughs from the lookers on.

The long and short of it at the Amantani Pena!

Random Musings from Bolivia

Humble apologizes blog followers.  Our three weeks here in Bolivia have been ‘technology challenged’!  We’ve rarely found proficient Internet services and when we have our time has usually been spent reconnecting with Mom+Dad, Ma, and Gram via Skype – which has been a godsend really – leaving little time to post!  Many pictures taken of this amazing place but trying to upload to the blog is nigh impossible.  We hear things are better in Peru and hope to share them then.  In the meanwhile some random thoughts about this amazing country…

Breathless in Bolivia

I am not sure what is going to happen first - my eyeballs bursting or my head splitting in two.  We are on a snow-capped ridge at 5600m trudging carefully along a trail blazed by our guide Edwin.  We’ve elected to add a little ‘hiking’ to our tour of Southwest Bolivia's antiplano (plateau) and today’s challenge is an ascent of the 6008m Volcan Uturuncu the region’s highest.

Mendoza

The wine!  Our ten days in Mendoza and area was chance to sample from Argentina’s prized wine region.  The sparse valley and foothills butting up against the vast Andes range provided jaw-dropping scenery albeit tainted by clouds that lingered through out the visit.  We had numerous adventures and anecdotes chronicled below.

Breathless in Bolivia

We are presently in La Paz, Bolivia (altitude 3700m).  The headaches and lethargy of high altitude living has finally subsided after ten days and we have really enjoyed this colorful city, the world's highest capital.  The city is shaped like a giant soup bowl with building clinging to each mountain side at impossible angles.  Unfortunately, the internet is slowing our blogging progress so more on each at a later date.

Searching for sleep in the land of the sleepless

The fireworks rocked us from our peaceful slumber @ 4:26am on a Friday morning.  We thought a restful night of camping to end our week long road-trip  was in order;  we thought wrong.  While we’d never find out why we were treated to two minutes of fireworks, followed by dogs barking continuously for another 30 minutes, we’ve chalked it up to life in Argentina.