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Our bus ride to Cusco from Puno was yet another lesson in Latin American politics for our family. While at the time we viewed the hassles as a travel novelty, we later realized how lucky we were to make the journey unscathed. The strikers did not turn violent against us personally but we learned that they had killed two policemen in Puno the day before. (That would account for the heavy presence of shotguns on the brigade who led our caravan.) Likewise the mild-mannered little schoolteachers we passed in Juliaca went on a rampage after we left them, setting cars on fire and seizing an entire airport. Though unassuming in appearance, these angry, test-fearing educators can get downright nasty.

Many of our companions on our Floating Islands excursion in Puno boarded night busses to Cusco immediately following the tour. This was before the strikes erupted and none of us suspected any problems. In a wave of parental caution, however, Tom and I opted for the day bus, since crashes on Peru’s mountain roads are commonplace. We figured navigating the winding route during daylight was a safer bet than doing so under cloak of darkness, and as it turns out, we were right. We didn’t write about this at the time…we figured all the info about the strikes was frightening enough for the grandparents…but two Cusco-bound busses crashed in the early morning hours before we left Puno. We noticed one a few hours outside Cusco, a double decker with its windshield blown out and front right quadrant smashed. It didn’t look too serious, but there were no passengers around to tell their tale.

When we got to Cusco and did a little research, we learned that the bus we saw had crashed around midnight. The passengers, mostly tourists, had been forced to wait by its side guarding their baggage until another bus arrived five hours later to retrieve them. Far worse was another accident, which we fortunately did not see, in which 14 people were killed. SUTEP protestors had begun placing rocks in the road before sunrise and an unsuspecting driver lost control of his bus when he encountered them. The protestors we passed in Juliaca had chanted that the president had the blood of those who died in the streets on his hands, a curious transferance of blame for their dangerous misdeeds.

Our first task in Cusco was to reschedule our Machu Picchu trip. There are two ways in to the revered site: the first is via the Inca Trail, a hike we knew our little people couldn’t make and which books up months in advance. The second is the train, for which a limited number of high-priced seats are available. When PeruRail cancelled one day’s trains due to the strike, everyone with tickets for that day got priority for rescheduling for future days. By the time the dust settled, we had tickets for 3 days later than we had expected, no great tragedy but a stress nonetheless. Fortunately Gringo Bill’s, our hotel in Aguas Calientes, the village at the base of the mountain, could shift our reservation and our new home in Cusco, the Royal Inka I, made room to accommodate us for a few extra nights.

McKane and I wandered the city streets the first day trying to fulfill a number of important tasks. In the end, all we succeeded in doing was dodging a steady stream of chanting, tire-burning, 2×4-wielding protestors and meeting up with fellow travelers from Bolivia. Everyone had stories to tell and was praying the rails would reopen so they could get to Machu Picchu before their flights home. Though I was frustrated we were having to waste a day bypassing chanters and handling logistics, McKane was in his element. The two things he loves most about travel–shopping and meeting people–were in rich supply on the streets of Cusco.

The next day the cars returned to the city streets (they had been blockaded the day before), the trains started running (though one was derailed, two were turned back, and others had rocks thrown at them), and we got to know Cusco. We bought the pricey tourist tickets that granted us entry to 16 different sites and were disappointed to discover our $23 each didn’t include any of the town’s churches. In the past few years some “museums” that are more like grade school art exhibitions have replaced the churches on the tourist ticket, so a new “churches only” ticket can be sold at a price of $11. We visited the museums of folk art, contemporary art, and local history and the Convent of Santa Catalina (which the kids found creepy) before calling it a day. We were underwhelmed by the museum offerings but eager to venture outside the city to the ancient Inca ruins.

Of the many options available, we chose to travel to the ruins of Pisac, an Inca citadel about an hour outside Cusco. We hopped a cab in the early afternoon and had the ruins virtually to ourselves. Protestors had been blocking other routes in to the Sacred Valley and generally messing up the standard tour bus routes, so arriving independently proved a wise choice on our part. We hiked the trails that snaked through the hillside fortress, soaked up the sacred vibe at the captivating Temple of the Sun, and played hide and seek amongst the crumbling stone walls overlooking Pisac’s massive agricultural terraces.

As we wandered, we talked about the Incas, the Spanish, and the surprising versatility of ancient ruins. How could the Incas have guessed that 700 years after they constructed them, their stone masterpieces would become a playground for gringos? Probably no more than our Cambodian guide, Ponheary Ly’s, Khmer ancestors anticipated that she and her friends would play hide and seek in the tree-covered halls of Angkor in the fateful days before Pol Pot’s seizure of power. The Incas certainly did not anticipate their demise at the hands of the Spanish, but their striking craftsmanship stands as a legacy that reminds all those who visit they were an advanced and formidable civilization.

We drifted off to sleep our final night in Cusco, our minds filled with the rich yet conflicting images of Baroque art, Inca stonework, and chanting teachers. We hoped that when the morning arrived, the modern day Peruvians would clear the roads and rails long enough to grant us access to the pinnacle of all Peruvian sites–the ancient mountain itself. If not, perhaps we would have to join other anguished tourists and blaze an Inca trail of our own.

We breathed a collective sigh of relief as we crossed the border into Peru, hoping that our final country would offer relief from the problems that had plagued us in Senor Morales’ socialist mountain dominion. For the first few days we lived in idyllic ignorance and soaked up the flavors of Puno, the gritty city perched on the northwestern shore of the world’s highest navigable lake, Lake Titicaca. We had hoped to view the lake from the more picturesque location of Copacabana, Bolivia, but there was no way we were going to risk getting trapped behind strike lines again. So we resigned ourselves to our less charming yet politically more stable location and settled into a wonderful little hotel complete with a fireplace in the lobby to stave off the bitter nighttime chill and a windowed 6th floor dining room that offered sweeping views of the formidable waters.

Almost everybody who tours Peru passes through Puno, but I’m not sure anybody really likes it. We found the people reserved, the food bland, and the weather dreary, something unusual for this time of year. In the midst of the sleet and gloom, we booked the city’s one obligatory tour–a boat trip to the floating islands of Uros. In the waning light of the afternoon, we boarded a motorboat along with about 15 other tourists for the 30 minute ride to the islands. Our guide, Herman, pointed listlessly to a map and explained in a nasal monotone that Titicaca means “puma stone” in Quechua. “But be sure to pronounce the ‘c’ as a hard ‘k,’” he explained. “If you say the softer ‘c’ “or you’ll be saying ‘puma poop.’”

The Uros Islands were first constructed over 500 years ago by pre-Incan people seeking refuge from invaders. They constructed the islands out of the lake’s ubiquitous, buoyant totora reeds by anchoring them to clods of root-enmeshed dirt. In times of calm, they anchored them to the lake floor using ropes and sticks, while in times of danger, they simply cut them loose and floated away. A few hundred descendents of the Uros remain on the 43 islands today, but most of their relatives have chosen to take up life on the mainland. Those who have stayed do so mainly to cater to tourists who find their squishy, bobbing existence baffling.

We found the islands interesting but recognized that the steady stream of visitors over the years has permanently altered the lives of the inhabitants. They did not so much feel like a people untouched by time as a group cloying for the money of tourists. The women hawked wares shipped in from Puno, the men offered rides on boats woven from totora weed, and the children madly colored on tiny pieces of paper which they then begged us to buy. It would be naive to assume that any people could preserve an ancient lifestyle in a modern, commercialized world, but it’s still disheartening to encounter a people so clearly defined by their catering to passersby.

Titicaca has many permanent islands which we did not visit and we hear the people there live lives more consistent with those of their ancestors. The Isla del Sol off the coast of Copacabana is one of the most spiritually significant sites in South America both for Catholics who revere it as a pilgrimage site and indigenous people who view it as the birthplace of Inca culture and mythology. The most intriguing thing for us about Titicaca, however, was the fact that Bolivian Navy (yes those two words are indeed an oxymoron) uses the lake for training exercises since their country is landlocked, i.e., they have no ocean shores nor access to naval waters. The Bolivians have never really gotten over losing their coastline to the Chileans in the late 1800s and many still harbor dreams of winning it back. When zany Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez visited a few months ago, he stoked Bolivian delusions by claiming he would one day lounge on a Bolivian beach. We’re not putting any money on Bolivia staging a comeback anytime soon, especially since its people can’t seem to move beyond hurling sticks of dynamite, demanding free gas, and throwing rocks, but I suppose stranger things have happened. In this part of the world, nothing should come as a surprise.

Back on land in Puno, we noticed the town square was filled with noisy, banner-toting folks, who we thought might be part of a religious procession (they were gathering outside a church) or institutional celebration. Little did we know, a storm was brewing that would make our Bolivian troubles seem trifling and wash away our Peruvian peace in a flood of political discontent.

Technorati Tags: Family travel, Floating Islands, Lake Titicaca, Peru, Puno, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW, Uros Islands

It seems it has become my job to write posts about busses. I have written about busses in China, Thailand, Turkey, and now South America. As you probably know if you have read our previous posts, the Devil’s bus company, Todo Turismo, chucked us in the middle of Bolivia at 3:00 in the morning with no immediate way out. After our fight with them, which got us absolutely nowhere, we decided that we would skip La Paz entirely and hop a couple busses through Chile to Peru, a task much easier said than done. Joining us on our excursion were Simon and Bluesy, a couple of Oxford guys doing a South American tour and a Frenchman who we think is named Stephan but aren’t quite sure because he rarely if ever talked. Our plan consisted of hopping a bus from Oruro to Iquique, Chile then getting another to Arica, Chile, another to Tacna, Peru, another to Arequipa, Peru, and finally a last to Puno on the shores of Lake Titicaca.

Our first task would be to find a way out of the dreary mining town of Oruro, so a contingent headed over to the bus station as the sun was rising around 7:00 am. Unfortunately for us the first bus out of Oruro wasn’t until 11:30. We managed to stage a sit-in in the Todo Turismo office until this time. The employees were not happy since they had planned on forcing us all into cabs and leaving at 3:00, but Simon and Dad made it clear we weren’t going anywhere. The employees just played cards while we hatched our escape plan, ate the Oreos we were supposed to receive on the bus, did internet research on their computer, and continued to question why they had abandoned us in this unseemly town.

When the appointed hour arrived, we hopped on the bus to Iquique and bade a bitter and not so sweet farewell to the challenged country of Bolivia. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t the most pleasant of busses. (Bolivian busses are not known for their comfort.) It had little leg room, and I swear the bus driver must have been drunk or just out of Bolivian driver’s ed. He dodged and weaved on the mostly unpaved roads and we struggled to keep our Oreos down. Four hours later in the middle of the desert, we made yet another unpleasant border crossing, which took quite some time due to Chile’s super strict customs restrictions.

We finally arrived in our first stop, Iquique, at 9 pm. We immediately booked a bus to Arica and went out to find some food. The best place we found was a pizza parlor that was open late. The rest of the town was already closed for the night. We ate heartily due to the fact we had eaten nothing earlier in the day, watched some of the Copa America Cup, and waited for our 1:00 am departure.

We left the pizza place around 12:30 and started to make our way to the pickup point…not the actual bus station but a hole in the wall across from the central market. A street sweeper warned the us the way we had chosen to walk was “peligro” so we changed our route. It was eerie wandering through the silent, graffitti-ridden, Chilean streets, but we had little choice in the matter and figured if nothing else, there was safety in numbers. Our motley crew arrived early with high hopes for our first real Chilean bus. When we boarded, however, we were utterly disappointed. We had heard Chile had some of the world’s best busses, but this one was more like a Greyhound from the 50’s that had at one time or another been abandoned in the middle of the desert only to be found again and put back into service. Fortunately we managed to sleep through the majority of this bus ride and awoke around 6:00 am to another sunrise and the sight of the Arica bus station. From here we attempted to find a ticket to Tacna across the Peruvian border, a difficult task. Everyone had a different story. One misguided desk worker trying to sell us a ticket all the way through even told us that the ride from Arequipa to Puno was only one hour (it turned out to be closer to seven).

We found a nice tourist information guy who hooked us up with some cars to take us to the Chile-Peru border. These colectivos cost $6 for each of us (more expensive than a lot of bus tickets) and were mostly old 1980’s Chrysler K cars, something I never knew existed but my vintage ’80’s parents found funny. Our driver was really nice and guided us through one of the oddest border crossings we’ve encountered. It involved being dropped off by the colectivo on one side, waiting in a long line and then getting stamped out of Chile, getting back in the taxi and waiting in another line and getting stamped into Peru. Once in Tacna, yet another dreary desert town, we split up with Stephan, who had booked the expensive bus from Arica, and took a local bus with Simon and Bluesy to Arequipa.

As soon as we got on the bus, we noticed something strange. There was a woman spreading clothes all over the bus and spraying them with some liquid from a bottle. An old man sitting in the back started placing bags on the overhead shelves in the front and middle of the bus, creating a perimeter around us. We started moving his bags back towards the back of the bus where he was sitting. As soon as we were finished doing this he moved them right back. Suspecting a thieving scheme in the works, we confronted him and asked “Why are you putting your bags here?” He responded, “My wife!” We then moved the bags once again, and this time he didn’t try and move them back.

This bus, although brand new and equipped with TVs, was full of locals doing weird things. We decided we would be better off to keep our eyes open and stay awake the entire ride just to be sure none of our bags walked away. This turned out to be a good strategy because every 10 minutes or so the bus would stop and a long line of salespeople would board. They would walk up and down the aisle displaying their goods, usually bizarre food items and warm drinks. The steward showed three movies–Benchwarmers, Firewall, and Assault on Precinct 13–which helped us stay awake during the 6 hour ride. We arrived in Arequipa with all our possessions in tact but were tired and sick of busses (we had been on them for almost 2 whole days). Here we split up with Simon and Bluesy; they continued on to Puno while we decided to take a rest and stop over in Arequipa for the night (don’t worry…we would run into them again in Cusco). We were finished with busses for the moment, but our plagued relationship with these giant pieces of steel would all too soon resume.

Technorati Tags: Bolivia, bus, Bus travel, Chile, Family travel, Peru, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW

After a long, long three days of traveling through the Andes and the Salar, we arrived at a small office that belonged to our tour agency, Estrella del Sur. Everyone else from our tour was planning to go to Potosi and Sucre, but there were no buses going to those places that late in the day, so they were going to have to wait a day in Uyuni. We were also going to have to stay an unexpected day in Uyuni because we hadn’t reserved the bus to La Paz. There were multiple companies, but all of them only had between 2 to4 seats. Mom and Dad found this out on their expedition while the kids stayed and ate lunch in the tour office. Because we had no idea we would be staying in the small town Uyuni, we had nowhere to stay. Everyone else in our group went to a hostel with no heating. We couldn’t stand another night of no heat so dad went to go check out the only one in the book with heat, The Tonito Hotel, while the rest of us waited in the tour office for his return.

Dad returned unsuccessful: the Tonito Hotel wasn’t bad, he just couldn’t find it, but while he was out he checked all the other ones he passed. They were all lower than hostel level Dad said, and once again asked the lady at the desk in broken Spanish where the Tonito Hotel was. It wasn’t dad’s fault that he didn’t find the hotel, it was just that the first time the lady at the desk sent him to the Tonito Tours building, the same company as the hotel, just a block down the street the other way. Dad set out again with me and Kieran this time. We found it like 5 blocks from the tour office, and right next to the national guard base. It was really maybe 10 feet from all the marching, yelling, and singing national guards. It was the only place that looked like it would be warm enough for us. So we went back to the tour office and got our bags and made the trek to the hotel.

It was somewhere around 4 or 5. We had already eaten some food that our driver prepared for us, so we weren’t hungry. We just mostly hung out in our room and did school until dinner The dinner was pretty good and we had some pizza and garlic bread at the Minuteman Pizzeria, that according to the Rough Guide was the best food in town. It was inside the hotel we were staying so we could have it for dinner the next day right before the bus too! It turns out that the restaurant was owned by a Bolivian woman and an American man who had met in Boston and got married and opened up shop in La Paz, but with all the riots they decided to move to Uyuni with their 4 and 10 year old sons. Mom and Dad talked with the owner for a while and found out that she and her husband also owned the hotel.We finished eating and I went back to doing school. I thought Mom, Kieran, and Asher were still in the restaurant, but when Mom came back to the room alone I was confused. I asked Mom where the little kids were and she said that they were up in room 14 with the owners’ kids. I went upstairs and found them playing in the boys’ playroom. Kieran was playing PS2 alone, but he wasn’t trading off. I convinced him to let the kids play to and told him that the system wasn’t his to hog.The 10 year old put in another game called Tekken Tag that was two player so all of us could play and switch off. I was pretty bad because I hadn’t played in so long, but I slowly progressed until it was time for bed.

The next morning we woke up, had some breakfast at the restaurant, and did school until it was about time for lunch. We went downstairs to the restaurant but it was closed; it’s only open for dinner and breakfast. Dad and I went out to find some lunch. We found a crowded restaurant we thought we might try, and to our surprise sitting at one of the tables was about 2/3 of our group from the Salar tour. They were supposed to go that morning. Why were they still here? We went and asked them, and it turned out that the miners were striking blocking the roads to Sucre and Potosi. This worried us because it meant the road to La Paz might be blocked too We hurried and ordered our food and ran to the bus office. On the way we ran into someone from the hotel. She was a tour guide who comes to Bolivia with the big trucks parked outside the hotel. She told us that she heard that maybe there was a strike was blocking the road to La Paz, so we ran even faster, but of course it was siesta and the bus office was closed. There had been some people already waiting outside for it to open. We asked them about the strike and they knew nothing. So we went to go get our food. We payed the kids at the restaurant (it was run by an old woman and all the cooks and waiters and waitresses were kids). On the way back to the hotel we ran into the tour guide again. She said that the strikes were for sure. Dad knew that mom would be devastated since she had so much planned. We got to the hotel, and of course mom was crushed. The rest of the day she planned on what we should do.

_________ and Kris the 4 year old returned from their Grandma’s house while I was gone, and Dax, Kieran, and Asher were all already playing with them so I joined them. Later that day the bus called us and said that they were running the bus that night after all. We had dinner at the Minuteman again and tried some of their Death by Chocolate (a chocolate cake) and some really good cookies. We said good bye to our new friends and set out to the bus station with a bag of the excellent cookies. We got to the bus office to find a big crowd outside. We went to see what was going on. The riots had gotten stronger and all the rioters were very drunk so it was extremely dangerous. Some of the tourist still wanted to go but the driver was too scared, because sometimes the rioters pull the drivers out and beat them up. They told us we would have to wait two days to go. So we made the walk back to the hotel and luckily got the same room.

The next day we had breakfast and did some more school (Dax and I really have to get our stuff done). Mom and Dad went out to see if there was another bus that we could take but they didn’t find one. We did some internet and played some more Tekken. It wasn’t a very eventful day until the bus company called and said that they could make it through the roadblocks, so once again we got a huge bag of the cookies (this time a gift, thank you once again! : ~ ) ) and set out to the bus station. Once more there was a huge crowd at the office. Dad went inside and heard what they had to say. While he was inside a Peruvian tour guide came outside and told us what was really going on, while on the inside they were lying to everyone. The tour guide said that they were going to stop in a mining town called Oruro, and from there they would figure out what to do. Inside they said that we would make it all the way to La Paz by going around the strikes (like all the other bus companies were doing) or turn around and come back to Uyuni. Dad came out and we all got on the bus. Mom and I yelled at him not to go but he had heard the fake story and insisted for us to go. So we set out for a journey that wouldn’t end for 3 long miserable days.

Technorati Tags: Pizza, Playstation, Kids, Strikes, Uyuni