Machu Picchu, Lake Titikaka... and we are in Bolivia

A dark night in Cuzco and we pass towering bamboo structures with effigies hanging from them... ÷The castles... the castles that they light on fire÷ Santiago proclaims excitedly. ÷When are you burning the castles÷ he asks the señora who is putting the last touches on a shaky tower. At nine, we return. The castles are pyrotechnic displays that are apparently pretty popular throughout the Andes, and I am pretty sure they would be completely illegal in the States.

The first activity of the evening, fireworks, set off.. from the ground.. from a barrel.. all of us running for cover in case it explodes into the crowd, killing people, as happens now and then. Next, the ÷Vaca Loca÷ or Crazy Cow. ÷Aggggh, the crazy cow, run for it, Elizabeth÷ Santiago screams, dragging me behind him as I look around, bewildered. Apparently, the Crazy Cow is a papier mache cow filled with fireworks. Some idiot puts the cow on his head and runs around making the people scatter, running for their lives as the cow explodes flaming fireworks and rockets into the crowd. Santiago tells me that children have lost fingers in fire castle fiestas before as they try to escape the Crazy Cow... Talk about.. fun ???

Then the castles, as they light them on fire, they explode from every side, shooting fireworks into the sky, and, when they misfire, which is about 1 in 4 times, into the crowd. People screaming and laughing and drinking hot mate. The Latin American idea of a great night in the plaza.

The next day we were off to the overpriced tourist attraction that is Machu Picchu, now proclaimed as one of the seven wonders of the modern world. Incredibly expensive, full of gringos, though a lot less because a lot of Europeans and Americans fled, scared off by the earthquake, leaving the Peruvians to live in the devastation.

It was worth it. Once. Very expensive. An incredibly expensive and not very nice train ride in a train owned by a foreign company to arrive at the bottom of the montain. The first day we climbed the whole mountain, hundreds, maybe thousands of steep stone steps, to avoid paying the expensive bus. We went up to look for an illegal way in. We searched all around, but there were guards everywhere and we didnt feel like getting caught by the police and deported. We climbed back down the mountain, exhausted, and decided to cough up the dough to enter the ruins legally.

The next morning we got up at 4 am because we wanted to be in the lucky few who get to go to Wayna Picchu. Wayna Picchu is the mountain you see in the background in photos of Machu Picchu. Well, they only let in 200 people in the morning out of the thousands who want up. We arrived at the ticket window, bought our tickets, and took the bus, so exhausted from the day before we could hardly walk to the bus, much less up the mountain again. We arrived and the line was already huge! The ruins open at 6 am, we arrived at 6 05 and the line was huge!!! We entered the ruins and didnt stop for photos, running past old bewildered gringos to the far end of the ruins where another long line was forming... but... we made it! Numbers 167 and 168 of the 200. I could barely drag myself up the towering mountain but at last we arrived and found ourselves at the top of a mountain covered in ruins with an unbelievable view of Machu Picchu spread out below us.

Later in the day we climbed down and paid a local guide a few dollars to walk us through the ruins themselves. We took the overpriced train back to the town of Ollantaytambo, too tired to continue to Cuzco. The problem with Machu Picchu is that the money does not go to the local communities. It goes to foreign companies. We talked with the women who sold us empanadas in the street. She says, fortunately, in ten years the foreign companies are supposed to turn control back over to the local people. The bad thing is, gringo tourists are not conscious of anything, they dont think to question where their money is going or how they are affecting the local population. It is kinda sad how ignorant people can be.

A few days later, we found ourselves in Puno, on the edge of Lake Titikaka, the highest lake in the world. We heard something about some floating islands in the lake and decided to make our way out to some islands. The islands are called Los Uros and they are literally handmade by Aymara indigenous people so that they can live on the lake. It was used as a defense mechanism to protect them from the old Incan Empire. The islands are made of reeds, and on them our houses made of reeds, with reed furniture. The fuel is reeds and the boats are made of reeds, and the crafts are made of reeds... and the people eat... you guessed it, the roots of the reeds. Wait til you see the pictures, or Google it! It is crazy.

Afterwards we went to the Island of Amantani, a Quechua island where we stayed with a local family who was surprised when I blurted out the little Quechua I know. We talked with the señora about tourism and indigenous communities. Good discussions. The next morning to the Island of Taquile, another Quechua island where the men supposedly dress like the men on the Spanish island of Mayorca because a Mayorcan conquistador had bought the island in colonial times.

Lake Titikaka is incredibly blue and so large it looks like the sea. It is cold but beautiful.

Yesterday, after more problems at the border where the police suspected Santiago was an Ecuadorian drug trafficker and the immigration said his passport was fake (all this as twenty gringos passed by without any hassle or problems)... we entered Bolivia, and made it to the small town of Copacobana. We were supposed to go to the Isla del Sol, or Island of the Sun, today, still on Lake Titikaka, but we woke up to a torrential downpour, snow on the hills, and Santiago with a horrible cold, so we are waiting til this afternoon or tomorrow morning. Afterwards, La Paz and the Uyuni Salt Licks!

Earthquake! Bacterial infections ;( and Cuzco...

I thought I must be really really dizzy. I mean, I was pretty sick, but I could have sworn the room was shaking. I am opened my eyes and sat up. Santiago said ¨Elizabeth, we gotta get out of here¨ I followed him, confused, to the staircase. We were on the fourth floor of the hotel in Lima where we had arrived a few hours before, me barely able to stand with a horrible bacterial infection.

We reached the staircase and as we raced down it the building swayed back and forth knocking us around like pinballs down the stairs and out on to the street. As we ran out into the dark road and the earth moved like an ocean wave under my feet, I finally understood.

Earthquake. Strong earthquake. Santiago dragged me into the middle of the intersection far from the electricity poles. Women screaming and babies crying.

Two interminably long minutes later the earth stood still, but it wasnt over. For the next few days strong aftershocks shook the building and sent us running down to the street, me sometimes wrapped in a blanket and fighting a fever.

With no other options in Bogota, we decided to make a dash across Ecuador and travel south into Peru. We travelled four days straight without stopping and along the way I picked up a horrible illness that landed us in the hotel in Lima for five days after the earthquake. I didnt leave bed except to call my family and tell them, to their surprise, I was in Peru and not Colombia as all had thought.

Well, finally, two days ago, I was strong enough to leave Lima, and we headed south to Cuzco. In the night we passed Ica and Pisco, where the epicenter was and where hundreds of men, women, and children perished. The second floor of houses were on the ground. The poorest neighborhoods were the hardest hit due to the poor construction of their adobe houses. It looked like a war zone. Twisted remains of furniture in squashed apartment buildings. Children sleeping on the ground with a thin blanket in the cold. Fires in tires to ward off looters. Apocalyptic. Passing through in the bus, like seeing it on the news, except so much more real.

Now we are in Cuzco, off to Machu Picchu, accompanied by our constant complaint about ignorant gringo tourists. There are no tourists in Colombia. Southern Peru, on the other hand, wow.

Well, I am safe and sound and relatively pretty healthy now.

Stuck in Colombia

So we thought we were going to Venezuela on Saturday. We thought...

And before leaving Ecuador I got information from the Venezuelan embassy in the United States that said Ecuadorians and Americans dont need visas to enter the country. So Santiago and I arrive, after paying a car to take us all the way to Maracaibo, a city in Venezuela. We stop to get our border stamps. And... Santiago cant enter Venezuela...

´´But we checked in the embassy and it said Ecuadorians dont need visas...´´

´´Yes, if they arrive by air´´

What the freakin arggh??? It never said that ANYWHERE. Then the officials were all wanting me to hand over my passport, get my stamp, and enter the country, and I am like ´´No way, you think I will just leave my friend here??´´ So I got pretty pissed off, and the border guy was incredibly rude and Santiago said ´´well, what can i do´´ and the big bully was like ´´enter by plane´´ and basically threw his Ecuadorian passport back at us. Stupid ugly border pigs.

So we cant enter Ecuador, because of me. And we cant enter Venezuela because of him. We are stuck in Colombia. We went to a consulate in Riohacha and they wouldnt help us get Santi a visa... So we have spent the pass two days on a smelly bus travelling up into the mountains to Bogotá. Tomorrow we are searching for the Venezuelan embassy to see if he can get a tourist visa. And if he cant we have more problems... because he only has the permission to enter Colombia for thirty days, whereas they gave me 60 because I have an American passport.

So I havent been communicating because weve been in consulates and borders and stinky buses fighting for a way not to split up while not being illegal in any country. And of course traveling to my country is out of the question because how the heck is an Ecuadorian going to enter the U.S. legally and quickly???

To sum up, BORDERS FREAKIN SUCK HARDCORE... I AM INCREDIBLY ANGRY AT WHOEVER INVENTED IMMIGRATION RULES AND BARRIERS SO THAT PEOPLE CANT JUST BE TOGETHER WITH THEIR FRIENDS OR FAMILIES ... and anybody in the States that argues stupid things about Latinos and immigration can freaking shut the heck up in front of me because I know what these immigration rules and laws and borders do to people... what borders are making me go through right now... and its upsetting, incredibly upsetting

Dispatch from the Colombian coast

So, yes, I am on the Carribbean coast of Colombia right now and it is hot and sticky, but we finally found an internet cafe with good fans and a place to write you all since I´ve heard you´ve been worried.

At the Ecuadorian-Colombian border, I went to get my exit stamp and the officials say to me, ¨Um, you didn´t enter Ecuador¨ What??? Apparently, even though I had the entry stamp in my passport it was never entered into the national computer system, so officially I didnt exist in Ecuador. This caused a pile of problems because since I never officially entered, I couldnt legally leave. But I couldnt stay in Ecuador either because of the aforementioned 6 month limitation thing. So it was illegal for me to stay and illegal for me to leave. I asked them over and over again what to do and they just shrugged their shoulders and motioned for the people in the line behind me to approach. Ecuadorian officials are incompetent beepity beep beeps (CENSORED).

I was on the point of tears and our only thoughts were to go to Quito and try to get me legalized. So finally we got a number for the Quito airport and a police woman there said that she would legalize me the next day but that I should go ahead and leave the country and not take the 7 hour bus back to Quito. So I went and told the officials that. But no one would give me a legal exit because everyone wanted to pass me off on to someone else. So we called the police in Quito again. And they said that the border control could call them. We told the border patrol to call the Quito police but they refused to. Why? Because they were simply lazy pigs that didnt want to get off their fat butts and call. So we called Quito again, and the police there called a corporal and the corporal called the border patrol, and we saw them get the orders to give me the exit stamp but they still wouldnt. Then we demanded the exit several times, and finally, 7 hours in to this ordeal, I left Ecuador, hopefully legally.

We walked across the bridge to Colombia to get our entry stamps and a line was forming. Ten minutes before the electricity went out. So there was no computers to do the entry procedures. After hours of waiting, they decided to take our names nationalities and passport numbers on little slips of paper, supposedly to be entered in the computers whenever the electricity came. So we will see when we try to leave Colombia. Maybe there will be no record of me here either.

We travelled first to Cali and later to Medellin. The buses are incredibly expensive and very different from Ecuador. They say that in Ecuador the buses are so cheap because they have so much gas in the country. Here, on the other hand, gas is more expensive and transportation is killing us. We travel by bus at night to not pay for hotels, and we have finally arrive in Santa Marta on the coast.

Well, that is the very fast summary of our Colombian adventures, but we are already about to go to Venezuela, perhaps even tomorrow, I will let you know how I am doing.