Alpacan Sweaters

If you were wondering if we survived the ¨World´s Most Dangerous Road¨ from the last blog, you can now relax--we are fine. Just one flat tire was about the only complication. Don´t worry Mom, I was at least 6 feet from the cliff when the tire went flat. After La Paz, we went to Copacabana which is a small city on the edge of Lake Titicaca. Within an hour of arriving, we had found a sailboat rental area. These sailboats were one of a kind for sure. There was only one sail, no jib but still a wooden mast and boom. Sure enough, we decided that for about 8 bucks a person, we couldn´t resist this adventure. So we woke up at 5:00 in the morning and went down to the shore and sailed off to the ¨Isla Del Sol¨ or the Island of the Sun. This trek only took us a while on the way there because of bad head winds, but we recovered by spending the night on the island. On the way back, it only took us about 3 and a half hours because the once head wind, worked in our favour.

The sunset from the "Isla Del Sol"

After this adventure, we took off for Cuzco, Peru on another freezing cold, overnight bus where we connected to a train to Aguas Calientes which is at the base of Machu Picchu. If you have seen pictures of Machu Picchu, you probably think it is neat, but we are witnesses to the fact that it is way better than it looks from the pictures. It is much bigger than you would think from those indications. Thank goodness we loved it, because they make you pay an absolutely ridiculous price to enter. We also had a chance to hike the giant mountain called ¨Waynu Picchu¨that you see in the background of this picture amidst the clouds.
From here, we were only able to get tickets for a first class train that only took us half way to Cuzco. We were pretty choked at first but we reluctantly accepted to take these tickets because there is no other way of getting away from Aguas Calientes except this train. Needless to say, our scruffy faces and dirty, stinky clothes and backpacks did not necessarily fit the norm for first class. However, we were pleasantly surprised with the most ridiculous entertainment which included a man with a mask and a stuffed llama around his neck dancing around followed by a modeling show to techno dance music. What a riot.
Skipping ahead, we are now back in Cuzco where we will be here until Sunday evening. Yesterday, we all bought sweaters that come from Alpacan fur which are ridiculously awesome to say the least. Anyways, from Cuzco, we will take another overnight bus (probably freezing cold again) to a city called Arequipa where there are huge volcanos and the biggest canyon in the world. It is more than twice the size of the Grand Canyon.
That´s about it. Here are some pics as promised.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2100862&l=74a39&id=116205194

On the Road, through the Desert.

Well, it is official, we are now backpacking through South America. But first, let´s backtrack a bit and tell you a little about our Pastor seminar that we did on our last day in Paraguay. We woke up early in the morning feeling underprepared and wondering if the dark, dreary clouds were going to turn to rain. Well, long story short, the rain came and poured. We adapted though, and kept pushing through the theoretical stuff in hope that it would stop raining and then we could do the practical drills if it stopped. Well, our speaking went well and people were really responsive but the rain wouldn´t stop. At one point, we made a joke to the people that the rain wouldn´t stop us in Canada from playing soccer. Well, I don´t know if that is what spurred them on, but either way, they felt the material was valuable enough to do the drills even in the rain. Funny enough, the rain was worse than we had ever seen as it was probably a sort of tropical downpour and Bryan and I were both wearing white T-shirts. Bad News. Oh well, overall a great success and we were stoked to be finished. Oh ya, we also have some hilarious pics that we hope to post one day of that youth group game where you put the lifesaver on a toothpick that sits in your mouth. Then, you have to pass it off to the next person´s toothpick without dropping it. If that is confusing, we basically watched these people ¨almost kiss.¨ Very amusing.

Now let´s bring you up to speed with what we have done so far. Our first 50 hours or so included about 35 hours of busing with a little bit of waiting in bus stations. We bused through Northern Argentina, into Southern Bolivia to our first major stop in Uyuni. The bus ride from the border of Bolivia to Uyuni was only about 270 km but it took us over 10 hours which included: cliff hanging bus rides, amazing scenery, driving through shallow rivers and creeks, randomly have to change buses in a city for some reason, and getting stuck in the desert sand for about 30 min where we got out and pushed. I am proud to say that 4 out of the 10 people pushing were us Canadians...proving that Adam has large biceps.

Anyways, Uyuni is a town of about 14000, and basically built strickly for tourism to the largest sand flats in the world. Here we went on a 2 day tour where we stayed next to a volcano that had about 10 families living in the town. There is so much we could say about this but basically, we were 3800m about sea level and then climbed a bunch of the volcano to about 4500m (that is about just under 15000 feet). It erupted 20 000 or 30 000 years ago whiping out the people. We also went to this cave where there were 5 mummies (a family) that was killed by the ash) but somehow their bones are still existant. Kinda hard to believe and the tour was in Spanish but we understood this more or less.

Anyways, last night we took an overnight bus to La Paz and we will be here the weekend. Hope to get pics up later and hope things are good back home...

PS. Too lazy to proofread, hope that this makes sense.