Copacabana, meeting Bolivia and the people who enter it.

As said, I remet the Brazilians at the busstop in Cusco. Bus-cama to Puno, then further to and is definately of the crazy kind in a good sense. We meet later in Puno, waiting for the bus to Copacabana. The brazilians and I get along find and exchange some music and e-mail addresses. After the 6 hour busride to Puno, it is 5 in the morning and, though we are tired, we are in high spirits and about to visit the highest salt lake in the world: lake Titicaca. After an improvised breakfast at the station we say goodbye and I place myself near the people that are going to Copacabana as well. There I meet Dave and some British girls. Later in the bus I make contact with Diego, a guy from Colombia and Ailin, an Argentinian girl that works with cruiseships in the island of fire. Coincidence? We exchange data.

We all cross the border and there we go separate ways. Dave and I decide to have lunch first, before he needs a nurse in the hospital to clean out his wounds (he fell with a mountainbike and showed us a video how a nurse sprayes water in his arm from one hole and it comes out from another.) There we meet 2 norwegians and a swiss fellow who offer to help me with any questions related to Tromso, northern Norway. They seem very nice chaps. When I go for a visit to the restroom and come back, they have made their run for the bus already. Two other Norwegians sit at the table next to us and we start talking. They are photoshooting the school life of Bolivia. They offer us their room for luggage storage and we deice to take a walk together. Dave and I go up the mountain, next to the lake up towards the graveyard to get some good pictures. He gives me his camera and takes the most funny positions including ones without any pants on, where I climb up rocks next to great opportunities to kill oneself jumping down.

Time's up and we order a quick pizza, get it on take-away, say our goodbye's to the kind Norwegians and the two Dutch girls we met and then devour the pizza in the bus on our way to La Paz. In the middle of the road, we were sleeping, we get waken up by people shouting: get out get out! take the boat take the boat! WHAT?!? What do you mean boat? This is a bus.. right?
A soldier in camouflage outfit with a gun tells us to get out. Ok, so this is serious. Once we get out we realise that the entire bus will be transported on a launch (small vessel) and can not cross with people on board. So we have to buy a ticket for another boat that transports us to the other side of the lake. It looks alot like a refugee boat. A man on board gets nervous of us taking pictures with flash and tells us things I can't repeat. When I ask him what he was saying, his female family member next to me assures me it was something about the weather and that he is just nervous. Whatever. I won't let his foul or nervous mood waste my good spirits. Not today, I've let people do that too much in the past. Didn't bring me any good back then, so fuck him. We arrive at the other side and while Dave gets a sausage from the street corner, a woman asks me whether I am Argentinian or not. ( I get that alot, peole asume sometimes I am from Chile or Argentina because of the way I look and some parts of my accent. Then again they also believe I am the lead singer of the maroon 5. As if!) The woman is Bolivian but lived in the Netherlands and speaks a few words in Dutch to me. What are the odds? When we finally arrive in La Paz we get dropped off in a ghetto like area. We manage to get a proper taxi (with phone numer on the side) and get dropped off at Loki Hostel. The hostel seems to be located in Brisbane, Australia or New Sealand or whereever where they speak English. I drink two beers with Dave and his friend before calling it a night. The next morning early, I call Cecy, ambassador of the Couchsurfing community in La Paz. I find a cab with the right number 7.. waiting in front of the hostel that takes me to her house. A Brazilian Couchsurfer is just leaving. The house is gorgeous. I´m not surfing any couch, I have my own room with an incredible view over the mountains. The universe can treat us travelers with great compassion and marvel.

A desolated Machu Picchu.

We get up at 04:45 a.m. A strike of public transportation prohibited hundreds of people coming to Aguascalientes the day before. We have the priviledge to step into the lost city with the least amount of people possible these days. Only a movie rental of the spot would have permitted less people up there. One of the goals of many travelers during their trip in South America. I remember that my father once held out an Atlas, asking me to say 'stop'. He stopped at a page. Again. 'Stop', I told him, he showed me the map, his finger pointed at Peru, just next to Machu Picchu. You will go there one day he told me.

That was many years ago. Now I am actually entering this lost city, where the Inca's had a center. I follow a guide who I met on the Inca trail and he tells his group about the incredible results the Inca's reached in a solemn century. If they would have had 50 years more, they might have never been conquered by any other people. Their system was one of spreading education and prosperity, sending teachers and builders around the country in order to spread new techniques and knowledge.

Coca was sacred to them. So much vitamines it contained, they didn't have to eat a lot of other things. It gave them the enrgy and vitamins and minirals to do all this work within only one century. I am chewing the leaves and find my tongue numb while I listen to another guide giving an even better explanation. It is definately worth the ride. At first we marvel with dizzyness because of the altitude and the possibilities to fall of the mountain that surrounds you. That gets even better when I climb the other mountain. When I get to the very top I have an encounter with a centapede. I meet a guy from Norway and a girl From Colombia: Torbjorn and Lilian.
I meet two brasilians who I remeet later at the bustop bus from Cusco to Puno. This journey has been full of remeeting people. You meet at least twice in life, they say. Would that mean I might never meat them again? (Done with those.) Although in Germany they say all good things are (at least) three. I´ve met a lot of angels on the road. People that helped me, acompanied me, were companions, light, people to share a universe with, or just mere moments, advices, wisdom and experiences. The colombian girl, Lilan, and I sit together on the train back. We meet people from Brasil and have extensive conversations about life in Brazil, Colombia, the Netherlands. We get the bus back earlier to Cusco. She is due to leave tomorrow morning, she paid all my tickets and chocolate of her coins she wouldn't be able to change back. When we arrive she takes her leave. i tell her how she had been another angel on my road. Just as the doctor had been, the house in La Paz where Cecy and her family take me in and I get sick again. I seem to find protection and good people all the way. There is good and bad on the road of life, but thank goodness a lot more good than there is bad.

Alternative route to Machu Picchu; is it worth it?

So our hike began. Across the landslide, following the road up to Santa Teresa. Somehow we got split up. Lory and I walked faster than the rest and they got a cab on the way while we were visiting the restroom of Santa Teresa and getting a proper breakfast. We decided to walk all the way. The air is warm and moisty. We are in the jungle on a high altitude. Since we missed the colectivo we will walk all the way up to the hydroelectric powerplant and then along the railway tracks from there, up to Aguascalientes: last stop before Machu Picchu. We are actually lower than Cusco, which works in our benefit. With more oxygen in our blood than the last 5 days, the hike begins as a piece of cake. As soon as we approach the hydro electric powerplant we meet more and more travelers going about on the famous Inca trail. We have to sign in with our names and passport numbers before going up to the railway tracks. We buy some bananas and coca leaves from one of the stands and continue. Small steep stairs through the bushes lead up to the beginning of the railroad. I did not bring any hiking shoes and soon the typical grey stones start hurting my feet. It's only about 10 kilometers. The railroad takes us in between mountains along a wild river with tons of butterflies. Travelers from the opposite way greet us with content faces of having made Machu Picchu and radiate a certain mountainlike energy. After approximately 7 kilometers my feet are so blue that I have to jump the wooden blocks from one to another the rest of the road. When we finally arrive at Aguascalientes, we decide to chill and have lunch at a restaurant. That's where we run into the rest of the gang. We check into the same hostel and kill time with a deserved siesta, then buying our train tickets, some Internet and dinner. We will take the first bus up to Machu Picchu at 05:30 in the morning with the hope to see the sun rise from up there. Because there has been a strike that day, Aguascalientes is a lot more deserted than it normally is. That means we will arrive at the lost city with the least possible number of human beings. Awesome. After having survived our way up here, we know why people take the 175 dollar train there and back. We will take that same train back tomorrow. However we did get here for about 25 dollars all inclusive.. So we saved a good 60 dollars by almost dying. We do take a unforgetable memory and thus a great travel story home.

Death comes to us like a memory.

The day after my recovery I meet Lory in the Internet room and he opts for hiking to Machu Picchu through an alternative route. The trains and busses are on strike and I would hate to wait until tuesday to finally get up there. I have lost enough time as it is with the visit to the clinic and all. So, meet you back here in one hour? I start packing my things, check out the hostel, have my big backpack put up in the storage room and pay my bills up till then. When I remeet Lory, two girls decided to join us: Candle and Heather. Now we are four.

We bus to Urubamba and then further only to find out that it is dangerous to walk along the tracks during the day. Guards prevent people from doing it and they would send you back. We didn't bring any camp material and walking during the night in the jungle isn't that attractive, so we decide to bus all the way up to Santa Maria, then Santa Teresa and walk a mere 4 hours from there.

At the hostel I was supposed to meet two girls from Chile for breakfast: Constanza and Valentina. I hadn't met them that morning and had left on a fast spontaneous moment of opportunity, with these three to go to Machu Picchu. I hoped that they would still be in the hostel by the time I would get back. While I'm thinking these thoughs four people enter the bus towards Santa Maria. There are no more seats left so they have to stand up. They stand next to my seat and being who I am I start chatting. Guess what? They come from Chile and when the one calles the other Connie; I am again, amazed. They have the exact same names: Constanza and Valentina. It makes me laugh. We decide to travel together and now 4 have become 8.
They laugh loud enough to keep the entire bus awake while we drive through rivers, pass abysses in a way that the people sitting in front next to the driver, come out and show their scared pale faces during the stops.

We arrive at midnight in the middle of nowhere. A small jungle town with 5 inhabitants where we find a hostel for 5 Soles a night. Giant rats make their way down the stairs as we go up. The toilet protests for having to swallow anything by vomiting rays of water back into the bathroom. I sleep like a rose and don't even notice the jungle rain that wipes out part of the road we would still have to travel.

At 06:00 A.M. sharp the Chileans wake us up and we get a mini van to drive us up to Santa Teresa. We buy supplies, get in and we are off. The air reeks of Marihuana. A river gulfs wildly in the depth of the valley. The road we are on is made of gravel. It gets more narrow as we go up. After some amazingly curves we seem to be on the deathroad. The distance between the wheels of the mini and the abyss of certain death, if we would fall, becomes smaller and smaller. On top of the road being narrow... it has been raining the entire night and mud and gravel is coming down the other side of the road.

Imagine yourself in a minivan. Is shakes while driving up a steep road and when you look to your right outswide of the window you see a staring depth of about 1 kilometer vertically down. 170 to 160 degrees probably. Fear creeps up on you and the feeling of having lived your last day on planet earth starts growing in your stomach. It is like expecting that your plane might crash, but worse, more real. It seems more inevitable. When death comes to us, it seems to come as a memory. A really bad memory. Adrenaline rushes through your bloodstream and your breath gets cut short. You lose the connection with your diafram and panic starts glowing from your eyes, first mildly, then severely. The mini gets stuck. It tries to escape a rock that is in its way and waves from left to right. To the left: mud coming down, to the right: an abyss of death. Images of the van, rolling down the mountain with you guys in it, getting smashed into a human pizza, where there is no knowing whose eye belongs to whom afterwards, is playing in your mind. You are freaking out. It is all a bad memory of something you have lived before. You cannot believe this will be your ending. Your spirit rebells while the facts seem to be merely happening and you cannot stop the movie. Hold on a minute, STOP! Stop the movie! STOP! Let us out!! Are you fucking crazy!

As wild animals we start screaming against our fate. We do not want to die. Not here, not right now, rolling down a mountain with strangers where the result would have been an impossible mission to find which organ belongs to what person. The door opens and we get out in one piece. We are all shaken and shocked. I tell the driver; any next situation like that: you let us out inmediately on forehand, or I will shit in your minivan right there at the spot! He laughes. A minor consolation is that the driver goes up and down here every day. He knows what he is doing. We find out that there has never been any minis falling down the mountain. However, that did not make our experience one easy to forget.

From that point on, more and more people get into, or on top for that matter, of the mini. At the time we are 29 with 6 of us on top of the roof; we meet another point of destiny. A massive landslide that came down because of the rain destroyed part of the road and there is no way continuing by car is possible. The gravel/mud is fresh and it sucks in your shoes when crossing it. Besides there is the risk of more material falling down. There is no other way. Forward. We have to cross it. We do so with the speed of as if we were being chased by the devil himself and when we are all safe at the other side we cannot believe how exciting our morning has been.

Body tourists.

A strike of bad luck might have been at hand. After the unsuccesful attempt of reviving my camera and leaving my bankcard in a ATM in Lima, my wallet disappeared into thin air and another card got swallowed. When I arrive at the Loki hostel I meet a girl who looks exactely like the girl in Machuca (Chilean movie). We are both tired but decide to go out to a restaurant. We walk out the 450 year old building, down the stairs into old-school Cusco. I remember the scene in `Diarios de motocicleta´ where Ernesto has a guide telling him about the difference between the mayor stones and the tiny stones in the wall. The mayor ones being built by the Inca´s and the tiny ones by the Spanish, or as the guide referres to them as; the Incapaces. The small stone path streets have stores on everywhere and girls standing on either side ask you whether you want a massage. Later I find out how some massages have a so called ´happy ending´, which probably leaves you rather empty and sad if you ask me. Definately not my cup of tea.

We find the restaurant after a mini tour and while she orders pancakes, I order a salad of cooked vegetables. Should be no worrie after having spent almost 7 weeks in the continent, I think to myself. When the salad is served it has lettuce and some vegetables. I decide to take my chances. WRONG choice.

That same night I start peeing from my ass to put it delicately. The next day I try to remedy the situation with a pharmacists recommendation of antibiotics. 36 hours later there is still no improvement of the situation and at this point I can barely walk any stairs. I talk to reception and they opt I might have Salmonella. After having tried to get down a slice of toast and failing, I decide to ask them to call a doctor. She arrives within half an hour and tells me that I probably have salmonella AND a parasite at the same time- Amoeba, which is pretty agressive and is dehydrating me fastly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoebiasis

The doctor is an angel. She gets me to the clinic and has the nurses put me on a drip immediately. 24 hours of being invadced by cold drops that enter my left arm through my veins works! After having watched a dozen movies and having dozed of another dozen times I am alive again! The nurses wake me up at 05:00 a.m. to get the last antibiotics into my system and by 11:00 in the morning I am out of there. When I walk back I feel as if I escaped death. I hope this is the end of it and I keep a positive souvenir out of it being a higher resistance. I do not want any more tourists in my body!

Are you paying attention? I guess not ey.

From a wonderful last day in Lima into a state of total confusion.
I visit the embassy in the morning and go wandering about in Miraflores after. I pass stores and coffee places asking around for a photo camera place where they might be able to fix my camera. In the first place not even my SD card seems to work, but I´m stubborn enough not to give up after my first try. So when I come to the second store.. it DOES work and I can rejoice about the fact that my photo's have not gone to the same place where Jesus lost his sandals once.

I bumb into a T-shirt of Socrates and decide to buy it on the scene. 20 soles equals around 7 dollars, cheap enough. Even though Lima is slightly more expensive than Northern Peru, it´s still all very affordable. After asking some more people I get the directions to a technician that might be able, please pretty please to fix my machine I´ve come to miss. Not having the camera present is like being nude almost at some point. Or you pass by a beautiful scene or moment grab for your pocket and.. empty. So when I found out that they couldn´t fix it, I bought a new one. I mean, I have so much travel ahead still.

I say goodbye to the Acuña family. They radiate lots of positive loving energy and when I close the door I felt a touch of beauty right there. I make it by taxi to el bar ingles in one of the most fancy hotels in Lima. I have a date with Irina. We met in Huanchaco at the beach and we proved our suspicion to be able to have a good conversation to be true. We jump a cab to the center and take a last strawl before keeping it on a see you again rather than a goodbye.

I hurry to the starbucks where Herless and his girlfriend and Gabriela are already waiting. We grab a chai and a chai tea latte before running around hyper actively through the Mal and finding a spot to eat dinner. What a weird concept we walk into: Hooters and food. Would the girls that work there actually have their asses and boobies measured at the job interview? I don't get the concept though. We go there to eat food. Why would anybody want to be served by taste distracting girls wearing clothes that accentuate all there features with such intensity, it get´s hard to have a normal conversation or enjoy your meal. Who would combine a strip joint with a restaurant? I mean, really. You either eat or you focus on girls but the two together.. weird match. Strangely enough the girl who took our order keeps coming back to ask us whether we wish to have anything else: well, how about our food we ordered half an hour ago? She forgot, we paid our drinks and were out of there.

The next place served better food so it seemed, so maybe it worked in our benefit after all. Though I committed another stupidity after our meal. I had to take out money form the ATM.
They work just the other way around as in the Netherlands. WHY? WHY?!? WHYYYYY?!?!
They gave me my money before they gave me my card back and being in the middle of a goodbye operation I act to fast and leave my freakin' card in the machine! I only find out when I am about to board my plane later that night around 05:15 a.m. MIERcoles!

I get off in Cusco and haste to make a call in order to block the card. I have not slept all night. I put my wallet on the phone and when the Norwegian number doesn't work I ask the lady of the phone shop for any possible explanations. AS I turned away, somebody must have thought that wallet belonged to him/her and took it. That was BANG number two. Confused checking the phones and my pockets I realize I have now no money whatsoever, not even to take a cab to the hostel let alone pay for staying there. So I grab for my Spanish bankcard and slide it into another bankmachine. I give in the pin of my other bank account but realize it before trying anything. I get my card out and slide it back in again to give in the correct number this time. It didn't bother: it swallowed my card all the same. BANG number three. Now I`m at the point of nervous breakdown. Breath Kaj, breath. I find my credit card and take out 500 soles from a machine just like the one in Lima. I don't forget my card but see how I can just perform another operation without having to give my personal pin code a second time!!! Ogmog. That would mean that anyone that found my card stuck in Lima could have just run off with 2900 dollars. Ok, now I´m upset.

I call Anitra in Norway, since the phone number of the bank is not correct even though I have it on a business card printed out. And she, thank goodness gets the card blocked. According to my account the money was still there. However there is a slight possibility that it has been taken, though has n´t come through to the bank yet. Would I need to stay here and find a job or what?
the woman in the second phone shop tries to calm my down.

I find a taxi and explain the driver what happened and ask him if he can be nice to me and charge me the normal 3,50 they would charge a local (the phone shop lady just explained that that´s the normal price, but foreigners are always overpriced for 4, or 5 soles. Now this Jerk was from another level. I plead for his goodness and explain him my conditions and he STILL is interested in ripping me off and having me pay 20 soles! Es la tarife he says showing a card with different numbers for different places. Yeah right, A card he printed out himself probably. Usted esta loco! I tell him. Que maltratado. Dejame salir, ya. I take my bags and get off the taxi and command him to take my bag from the back. Son of a bitch. I think that in my humanity, even though I would be trained to rip off tourists, when I guy that already lost two bankcards and his wallet would come to my cab, I wouldn´t even charge the poor bugger the one dollar fee.

Now which characteristic is more genuine to human nature? His or mine?

Depending on conditioning and state of well being, all is relative. I was flabbergasted yet again with how people can act. I decide to drink a mate de coca first and calm down. I do so in a restaurant where a woman treats the waitress like a piece of shit. In my mind I walk up to her and tell her as a gentle man: good morning miss, how art thou today? Do you feel good? Had a nice morning? I just observed your way of addressing the waitress and I wondered how you would feel if I would have addressed you in that manner. I wish God will give you the double of what you wish me, miss, have a nice day. In real life I merely think these thoughts and lack to perform.

Fractions in time.

Yesterday night Ivan had to go back to Tortuga to finish his internship. We embrace our goodbye as he puts me on a trustworthy cab and I yell at him while passing by: Que en tan poco tiempo ya se puede aprender a querer alguien no? (That in so little time we can learn to love someone.) We had loads of fun while wearing the mask of spiderman, eating grapes and going to the beach. Most stories got recorded, but unfortunately, I can be so unthoughtful.
I had put my camera in the back pocket of my newly received bermuda and went into the pacific. I have still some hope left that after cleaning my card and camera with alcohol some of the material might have survived, but I fear the worst.

Herless, his girlfriend Diana and me in a taxi on our way to meet up with Ivan and his friends in order to have a blast. The taxidriver receives a call and stops to take note. He takes more than 5 minutes when we tell him, sir, we are in a hurry in case you didn´t notice. Sir, we CAN take another taxi too. He seems to ignore us and is so focused on his next ride appointing the directions.. I decide to get out of the car. Herless and Diana get out when another taxi comes by. Only now the driver comes to his senses ad asks whether we do not wish to continue. I had never seen Herless get mad until that moment. 'Que andas a la mierrrrrrda, te reviento el puto caro si no te vayas inmediatamente!' Wow. Now that is some serious latin heated attitude. I crack up since Herless is the most harmless guy I know, always calm and at ease. He just threatened to trash the taxidriver´s car with some serious anger. How unexpected and therefore how funny it seemed. We take another taxi and arrive at the peruvian hour (one hour late).

We danced our asses off in ´el serjante pimienta´ it was saturday night carnaval. Some people had paint in their faces becasue of the tradiation to splash water on eachother or even paint the face of the person standing close to you. We got pretty drunk too.

I came to Lima by nightbus (buscama) after leaving Huaraz. I suffered from some Sorroche during my trip to Chavin at 4200 meters altitude that even the coca tea couldn´t undo. I felt dizzy and with nauseas during most of my waking hours. Nontheless after having met up with Reed and Lauren and our personal mountain guide couchsurfer Victor Hugo, we went Rockclimbing there and man, did we love it. I managed to climb over an upside down obstacle into a vertical route and surpassed myself in doing so. When I arrived at the top I was glowing with the feeling of havin managed while my lungs hurted because of the lack of oxygen. A great experience.

We kept circling the main square and market to find the most precious small gifts. A llama like creature spat at me without saliva after having carressed his left ear. I had a tea with a girl that told me about Huaraz in the first place. She worked at a casino where I picked her up and while waiting won 20 soles on the slotmachines. After having stayed two nights in a hostel with great views over the snowpeaked mountains we surfed Victor Hugo´s apartment for travelers for two more nights and watched a movie or played chess. Victor said he sucked at it, but turned out to be lying. The first day he took us hiking through the area and we had milkshakes and coffee. My last day there he promissed to beat me in 8 moves. Instead I won, but he was high on rum.

The woman in the hostel told me all sorts of stories about climbers and their deaths for not wanting to bring a guide while ascending. She seemed to be a lovely caring woman who had the families of the dead in her hostel crying over their lost sons.

My time in Lima is ending for now. I will fly to Cuzco tonight at 05:40. Lima is not as ugly as people advised me on forehand. I´ve learned to recognize the kind of taxi´s to take and the kinds not to take. People have been mugged taking the wrong taxi. My judge of character and the presense of danger I seem to be able to feel quite clearly guide me through streets and faces.

Two bricheras (girls that try and get with tourists in order to obtain something) approached me the other night. One seemed to be learning from the other. My intuition stated clearly that they were up to something. It made me feel sad. Such a pretty girl learning how to play out foreigners in order to rob their wallets, or god knows what. I told the younger student about my gutfeeling and how I felt about it. They left shorly after. Nothing bad happened. My Limenean friends were there to keep an eye on the situation. Still the experience of looking them in the eye in direct contact looking for one another´s intentions was a weird experience. When they left the ambience cleared up and we danced boldly. I shared the afterbite of being drunk, my chicken burger, with one of the streetcats before taking the taxi home.

Peruvian food includes shells with onions and seafruit, the cow´s heart, giant rats, big corn and loads of different methods to prepare chicken mostly drained in a hot sauce called Agil.

I´m almost off to the mountains and jungle. I will need either ginger of pills, along with coca tea, lots of coca tea. Then it´s further to Puno and into Bolivia, La Paz. The ambassador of couchsurfing La Paz will host me. People told me I cannot miss out on the desert of salt with all kidns of colours. I hope my camera can be revived.