Yesterday and Today (I'm so creative)

     We have arrived in the small town of Copacabana, right on Lake Titicaca.  The Bolivian side of the lake is much more beautiful than the part of the Peruvian one that we saw--hills rise up from the lake and Copacabana is so much less polluted than Puno.  

     The bus ride took about 4.5 hours, but that included the border stop.  It went a lot smoother than expected--we first visited the police office where they checked to see that we weren't fleeing the country, then we went to get our passports stamped to exit Peru, then we walked across the border and got our passports stamped to enter Bolivia.  On the way across we saw something that we first thought to be a funeral procession, because there was a parade of people dressed in black versions of their native clothes (which is really something to see--they favor the brightest colors) but later thought to be a sort of greeting for dignitaries, because there seemed to be two lines of people shaking hands and wearing sashes and making speeched.  Really it could have been just about anything.

     The Bolivian traditional dress most commonly seen is worn by the Aymará people, but really just dates from the 1700s when the Spanish king ordered that they dress a certain way.  Since then it has become an integral part of the culture.  The women wear bowlers that balance precariously on their heads with our help by a hatpin, and cover these in plastic bags when it rains.  They wear shawls and sweaters; the shawls could be homespun or they could be gaudy and covered in sequins.  Barring the bowlers, which are usually a dark green or brown, their clothes are brilliant colors.  The skirts range in shades, but most seem to be made from a shimmery sort of material.  All the skirts the women wear have vertical pleats, but only the married women wear horizontal pleats.

     Arriving in Copacabana it was a short but uphill walk to our hotel.  The place where we are staying is basically two rooms plus a bathroom, but two stories.  The room upstairs has a bed and table, and downstairs is a kitchenette, my bed, a fireplace, some chairs, and a large glass window.  The building is build right on the ground so it has no insulation, but the walls are built around the rocks that were already there.  The shower is made of stone, and the sinks are wooden.  After our experience in Puno (somehow one of the more pricey things that we have stayed in to date) this was a great place to land.  We will spend 3 nights here before moving on to La Paz.  

    I should note that I am writing this on Sunday, but we have fairly nonexistent wifi so I won't be able to post until tomorrow.

    Now it is Monday, and I am editing this again because it is a little too much hassle to create another email and send it to myself and block and copy and reformat it and etc., because that is what I have had to be doing.  This morning we woke up around 5.30, but made up for it by having an indolent morning.  Around maybe 8-ish, I'm really not sure, we went out for a walk.  We were looking for a place where there are some Incan ruins carved in the stone so that, at the solsitice, the light will shine through just so, but it wasn't the solstice so it wasn't as impressive as it might have been.  It took us a little while to find it, because the only sign was set far back from the street and also so weatherworn that it was illegible.  There were stairs to the point where the rocks were, but it was uphill and we were feeling the altitude.

     On the way back we stopped in the cathedral, which is beautiful but also quite bare in many areas, and in a few of the streets that make up the market.  There we got some cereal things that people sell huge amounts of (picture later), bread, eggs, tomatoes, and a bag of milk (very weird to carry).

     Excepting the cereal, eggs, and bread, we bought the rest of the food at the 'supermarket', which is different from the street markets only by the fact that the vendors have a roof above them.  To get to the main part of the supermarket, you need to pass through an aisle created by the people selling meat.  Walking by the unrefrigerated bloody carcasses is most definitely NOT a pleasant experience.

     Once we arrived home we had the best breakfast since arriving on South America--salsa (fresh, though you can buy it in bags at the supermarket) and potatoes.  We had a pretty low-key rest of the day, albi intersperced with bouts of wrangling the wifi.  It wouldn't normally matter so much except that there are a couple of problems with the furnace back in Oly (it is not working).  My parents are at an internet cafe now dealing with that, and I'm hoping that our on-again off-again wifi will not disappoint when I need to post this.

         Referring back to the subject of food, we are very excited to find unflavored yogurt here. 
         Also, below are my final entries.   for the Lares trek (you didn't get away so easily).