Lake Titicaca

Wed 26 July 2006

Another early morning, we were up at 7am for a tour of Lake Titicaca. At the docks near the lake was an open air market with little stalls selling various homemade and unique items that might appeal to tourists. It was still pretty early however, so only a few of the stalls were open and we figured we'd stop on our way back through at the end of the day.

The tour guide loaded us, along with several other groups, onto a motorboat and we were off to the see the floating islands.

The islands are made entirely of reeds which are carefully bound and pruned into a living island which grows wider and wider every year.

Reed houses are constructed on their surface, small pools may be cut open in their center for farming fish, and entire boats made of the same reeds are moored to it's edges allowing families to travel back and forth from island to island or to the shore of the lake itself.

Even the pet houses were built out of reeds!

It was amazing to see how they prepared food using open fire right there on the reeds! You'd think if you lived on a reed island you'd avoid fire like the plague, but they have been living their for generations and have learned how to control the flames and keep them contained in their clay ovens.

It was a little scary stepping off the motorboat onto the island and feeling the soft squish of the reeds beneath your feet.

It definitely didn't feel like solid ground, and when the wind kicked up you could feel the smaller islands bobbing around like a boat on the water.

We took a reed boat from a smaller island up to one of the very large islands that housed a school, fish farms and even reed hotels. You'd be surprised at what passed for hotels on the reed islands! A reed hut just big enough for a single reed mat.

I sat down in front of one for a comparison picture and one of the native boys jumped into the picture with me hoping to earn a coin.

The native kids were always trying to jump into pictures to earn money, and most of the time it's fun just to let them stay in the scene. However you do kind of have to be careful because it can get out of hand pretty quick.

Arrival in Puno

Tue 25 July 2006

We were up at 7:00 am that morning to catch our 7:30 am bus from Arequipa to Puno. We arrived in the late afternoon and were happy to find rooms at the very nice Qelqatani hotel. Definitely on our top five list for accomodations in Peru.

Jason and Robyn were feeling the altitude however, and even after a few cups of coca tea they felt ill enough to keep us bound to the hotel for the rest of the day.

Up until now we hadn't given any thought to how elevation would affect us. Coming from a high elevation state we didn't even give elevation a second thought. But we had made a serious error in our schedule.

We started out our trip by flying into one of the lowest elevations in Peru, spending a week in Lima and acclimating to the elevation there. Now we were in Puno and the elevation change from Lima to Puno was enough to make half of us sick. Not a very well laid plan from our point, and something we'd have to change if we decided to return to Peru in the future.

For now however, with individual room heaters, and big bathtubs to soak in, staying bound to the Qelqatani hotel was not a problem for me.

Shouts in the Night

I had taken a strong painkiller and a double dose of muscle relaxant to help me sleep despite the pain, and I used earplugs to help ward against being awakened by any of the city noises, yet despite these precautions all of us were abruptly startled out of our beds in the wee hours of the night by the police yelling at our door!

Okay, it turned out that they were yelling at our neighbhors and not at us, but we couldn't help overhearing what was happening. Apparently the tourists in the room across from ours had been tempted into purchasing cocaine, which is very, very common and marketed by everyone including your taxi drivers in Peru.

The police were yelling for the tourists to hand over their passports and show them the drugs. Then suddenly everything got quieter and we heard the police state that it was not enough. Not enough what?? We looked at eachother in confusion before the realization of what was happening hit us.

The unknown officers (or those pretending to be officers?) had apparently been offered the amount of money they considered a fair bribe for turning their backs. We heard them hand back over the passports, close the door, and leave the building.

We all silently considered how safe we might be in a city so easily bought off by a few American bills before we at last allowed sleep to overcome us.

Touring the City of Arequipa

Mon 24 July 2006

First things first! Monday morning we quickly checked out of the Vallecito Inn and into our new rooms at the Qosoda Inn, the hostel we'd discovered in the La Beveda building the day before. We left our bags there and headed out to see some of the more popular sites in Arequipa.

The first stop for us was the Santa Catalina Monastery which was quite literally like stepping back in time. The monastery was HUGE with a maze of corridors and buildings to be explored, hidden gardens, beautiful courtyards, churches, chapels and burbling fountains. If you were to only see one thing in Arequipa it would have to be this Monastery!

The story behind it is just as colorful and fascinating as the monastery itself. The early town leaders wanted their own monastery of nuns and it was originally dedicate to this purpose. But as it was being built a wealthy young widow decided to retire there and brought her fortune with her.

The now financially stable monastery attracted the attention of other women of wealth and social standing, including the daughters of many leaders and chieftains. They brought with them servants, household goods and additional wealth. Living inside the monastery as richly as they had lived without.

While outwardly renouncing the world and embracing a life of poverty, they enjoyed their luxurious English carpets, silk curtains, porcelain plates, damask tablecloths, silver cutlery, and lace sheets. They employed musicians to come and play for their parties.

By the mid 1800s the monastery functioned more as a social club than a religious convent and word at last reached the ears of the Pope.

The church confiscated the money, sent home all the servants and slaves or gave them the option to remain as nuns, and all the wealthy women that had thought they would live there in luxury suddenly found themselves strictly reformed into dutiful nuns.

Despite the churches intervention, the monastery still retains many, many beautiful items on display. Some of the rooms looking like they belong in the parlors of wealthy country leaders, tempered only by the religious items displayed on the walls.

We had lunch "On Balcony" and decided to get a little more daring in our cuisine. Opting for the native looking filet de Alpaca over some of the more Americanized dishes.

The Alpaca was a bit dry for my tastes, and it seemed to have that "Peruvian all-spice" mix of seasonings that we were becoming quite familiar with by this time, but it was a tasty dish.

Our next stop was to visit the Ice Princess or Ice Maiden, Juanita, at the Museo Santuarios Andinos (Museum of Andean Sanctuaries).

She was discovered on the top of Mount Ampato near Arequipa, Peru. She was 12 to 14 years old when she was sacrificed and is believed to have died about 500 years ago.

There were a lot of other fascinating artifacts and items on display at the museum besides the maiden, and we took the full tour, so we didn't finish up until dinner time.

We wanted to eat at a new place each meal to try a variety of menus, so this time we chose the Inka Wasi. We were a little unhappy to see that it was a very Americanized menu, but opted to eat there anyway rather than feeding ourselves to the hostess sharks waiting on the Plaza. Jason and I shared a club sandwich, which was awful. How do you ruin a club sandwich?? I'd never have that it possible until I tried it.

I was unfortunately still suffering with rib disfunction from the car accident the previous year, and sitting in the solid wooden chairs at the Inka Wasi was apparently enough to tease one into dislocating beneath my right shoulder blade. That put a big damper on Jason's spirits as well, and we headed back to the hostel for a break.

Robyn and I remained at the hostel, while Nate and Jason headed out to the supermarket to ward off the hunger that remained after our disappointing dinner.

Next: Shouts in the Night >>

Arrival in Arequipa, Peru

Sun 23 July 2006

Early Sunday morning we had managed to catch a bus from Nasca to Arequipa, but we didn't get much sleep before people were opening their windows to the sunshine. We tried to cover our eyes and keep sleeping, but the busdriver turned on the music and there was no sleeping through that.

Tourists do not rank high on the bus line care list, so Jason and I found ourselves tossed into the very back of the bus right up against the toilet door. By mid-morning the smell of human waste and vomit was so foul that even die hard travellers that we were, both of us felt sick.

It was a pretty miserable ride for the next few hours and we were extremely grateful to finally arive in Arequipa! Robyn and I raced straight to the bathroom at the Arequipa bus station, and discovered that they charged $0.50 per person just to enter the bathroom. We should have used the bus toilet, but it was so nasty we had avoided it. Now we grudgingly had to part with $1 just for a chance to pee in a room that still smelled bad, but wasn't moving so we could squat more comfortably. At least the walls weren't covered in waste and vomit.

We quickly hailed a taxi and headed to the La Reyna hotel, but they were full and recommended we try their sister hostel. The place was so nasty we walked right back out! Our taxi driver suggested we try Vallecito Inn, which was not as nice as we'd hoped, but not as bad as the hostel. By that time were were all so exhausted we didn't mind the lack of luxury.

We dropped our bags off in the room and walked down to the Plaza de Armas. It was a nice little central square lined with shops that had restaurants over them.

We circled the square once and found that every restuarant had a host or hostess on the street hounding passerbys to eat with them. It was funny how they immediately picked Jason out of the crowd for his height and girth. You could almost see the dollar signs dancing in their eyes as they literally chased us across streets trying to convince him that he needed to follow them to the best eating.

Several hostesses risked their lives to run out into the street, stopping traffic to chase Jason and compete with the other hostesses hovering like flies around the man that stood head and shoulders taller than any of them. Jason is NOT of a temperment to mind such idiocy in his presence, and his polite refusals quickly turned to foul spanish curses.

We returned to one of the first restaurants we had passed, a place called La Beveda and had our dinner on their open air balcony. The view was beautiful, the food was good, and as a bonus we found that there was a nice little hostel in the same building with open rooms for us to stay in the next evening at HALF the cost of the Vallecito Inn.

Next: Touring the City of Arequipa >>

Nazca Peru and Flying Nazca Lines

Sat 22 July 2006

The Hotel Alegria courtyard is even more beautiful in the daytime! It’s like a geode stone, hard and repellent from the outside, but gorgeous inside! There is a downside however. If you walk to the upper most balcony and look out over those very tall, razor wire covered wall, you are jolted by the level of poverty kept just out of sight from the visitors.

The majority of the city has a hive like structure to it. A family might build a wall of mud bricks and hang a blanket as a lean to type roof from this. As children grow up, they might add another wall to their parent’s and so forth. The majority of the homes having only one or two walls, with handmade blankets providing privacy from neighbors and offering a simple form of family boundaries.

Stray dogs wander through the dusty alleys in packs, their bones showing through mangy skins, and dangerous if you are foolish enough to make eye contact with them. Most of them were limping from being struck by cars or attacks from other dogs.

Children play in rubble heaps, their clothing dirty and ragged.

It’s shocking to look from the lush courtyard of the hotel to the extreme poverty only a few yards away, but it really made me appreciate how much I take for granted in my own life.We had breakfast right there in the beautiful courtyard, before heading down the street to register for our flight over the Nazca lines.

We got on a bus to the airport with two other couples, and as we reached our destination we discovered a surprising number of tourists waiting in the souvenir shop.The tour company played a video about the Nazca lines, telling theories on their meanings, and of their discovery. We sat and watched it twice before stepping outside to see how much longer our wait might be.

They could only fit six people to a plane, so getting there early was apparently an important factor in how long you had to wait. At last we were loaded in and eagerly taking flight to view these fantastic ruins visible only from the sky!

Jason felt a little sick from the abrupt turns the plane had to make to best frame the image from each side of the plane and make sure that each passenger was able to get a view of them. I kind of felt like I was on a rollercoaster, and a couple of times I wanted to throw my hands up and squeal in glee! Thankfully I restrained myself!


Back to the hotel to schedule our bus tickets for Arequipa. It’s going to be a long bus ride, and after the ride from Lima to Nazca I’m not exactly thrilled with the prospect. *sigh*

We had dinner that night at the Rico Pollo, a meal that would haunt Jason for months afterwards. The food was delicious and the homemade Sangria outstanding. However, Jason decided to be a little too brave and ate some of the avocado off the salad. Up to this point we had all been very careful not to eat anything that might have been washed in water, but he figured since it was peeled it couldn’t be too bad. Oh did he rue that poor judgment later!

We walked around town and eventually made our way back to the hotel for a break from the sun. We made reservations for a hotel in Arequipa and checked out of the Hotel Allegria, wandering down to the Kanada Bar for a few games of pool and cold drinks while we waited for our bus.The bus ended up being very late. We waited at the bus station past midnight, but we were happy to find ourselves waiting with another group of Americans, so we had good company.

At last loaded onto the big double decker bus we eagerly tilted our chairs back and tried to catch up on some sleep! We were awakened a few brief hours later by passengers opening up their curtains to an early sunrise. Ugh!

Next: Our Arrival in Arequipa >>

Lima to Nazca and the Hotel Alegria

Fri 21 July 2006

We felt like we were starting to get the hang of things now. We remembered to put tissue in our pockets every morning before we left the hostel, because even fancy restaurants didn’t offer toilet paper (in fact they often didn’t have toilet seats). We felt confident in our abilities to get from point A to point B safely, as well as a feel for the people themselves. It was time to move on!

We grabbed a quick lunch at Dunkin Donuts, noticing that even this restaurant had a hired security guard at the door, and checked out of the hostel to begin the next leg of our journey. A taxi took us to the bus depot and we bought one way tickets to Nazca.

It was a two hour wait at the bus stop, but at last we were loaded up and on our way.

The trip to Nazca was not exactly scenic in the common consideration of the term, but it had a rugged beauty that I appreciated. There was nothing but miles and miles of sand with an occasional sand covered mud hut and a few chickens to break up the view. The squatty structures barely able to keep their windows above the level of the sand, looking almost as if they are sinking back into the earth even as we watched.

It was an all day bus ride, and night when we arrived at Nazca, only to discover that our bags were not on our bus. It was very dark, and Nazca is a notoriously dangerous place to be after dark. We didn’t really want to be running around looking for our gear in the middle of the night. In fact, it appeared that even locals didn’t want to be out running around. The few people that did stand on the street were hugging to the lit areas.

Thankfully the bus company had discovered the error in luggage before anyone was able to walk off with our stuff. The bags had arrived an hour before us and were being stored at the company’s headquarters. We gratefully retrieved them from the office and turned around to find an armed guard standing behind us.

He recommended that we allow him to escort us to our hotel, and we were not about to turn that offer down. The guard walked us down the street and across to the Hotel Alegria where another guard stood waiting at the door. The second guard opened the gates for us, walked us to the desk to check in, and then up to our rooms.

The Hotel Alegria is beautiful, even in the dark of night. It has a gorgeous pool and courtyard area. The rooms are adorable with little windows into the courtyard that latch for security. I’m very excited to see how it looks in the morning!

Next: Nazca and Flying the Nazca Lines >>

Lima; Central Park, Monastery and Ossuary

Thu 20 July 2006

Thursday we decided to be a bit more adventurous and go see some sites. We took a taxi out to Lima’s central park, which happens to be by the presidential palace with guards everywhere.

This is one of the best focal points to see a lot of neat buildings and tourist sites within just a couple of blocks radius. We eagerly walked up and down streets touring museums, monasteries, unique restaurants and just absorbing the great views and feel of the country.

We visited the San Franciscan Monastery and took the full tour. It was an AWESOME monastery with a bone ossuary beneath it that I adored! There were all these great tunnels and the bones had been organized and collected into patterns.

The highlight was a well that had been filled with skulls and leg bones because they had run out of room for large bones in the rest of the ossuary. It was extremely cool!

The taxi ride back from the central park to our hotel was very likely the most death defying ride I've ever had in my life. We hadn’t set up for a ride back, so we had to flag someone down on the street. That alone was dangerous, but this particular driver was aggressive to the edge of deadly.

He took a different route home than we’d taken with our original driver, maybe thinking he could shave off a few minutes of time. But instead it took us through several open market areas where there were more people on the street than cars, yet apparently even the cars were too slow for our driver.

This driver was insane! If a car in the lane ahead of him slowed down, he would squeeze his car between that car and the buildings, running people out of his way, barely slowing down and if he did have to slow down he would reach out the window and hit the other cars as he passed.

He hit two other drivers and kept going, yelling and swearing as he passed. He only slowed down when he was bumping pedestrians out of the way in crowded areas. Pedestrians in more open areas were in danger of their lives! He nearly flattened several people that barely managed to jump out of the way in time, including a small boy that came within millimeters of getting completely smashed.

At that point I could actually see Jason rise up several inches out of his chair preparing to beat the living crap out of the driver for being so careless. Jason is very protective of kids, even if they aren’t his own and I know he would have ended up in jail for beating that driver senseless if he’d hit that little boy.

Despite the fender benders and curses of bruised pedestrians we did manage to get back to the hostel in one piece.


Next: From Lima to Nazca >>

Larco Mar, Miraflores, Peru

Wed 19 July 2006

I was awakened by pounding construction just outside my window. I tried to put a pillow over my head and keep sleeping, but it wasn’t going to happen, so I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower.

As we looked out the windows to plan our day we thought maybe we’d be dealing with a lot of rain, since the sky was a dark stormy gray with heavy cloud coverage. We later learned that this is what the sky ALWAYS looks like over Miraflores. In fact it’s considered one of the dirtiest skies in the western hemisphere! Getting fresh out of the shower in Miraflores, you can almost feel the oily air rushing in to plug your pores.

Loki Hostel is great because they have a locked storage room for travelers to keep their bags safe while they’re out touring, but you do have to be careful because other guests in that same storage room can still get into your things.

We only had one incident of theft the only time we were in Peru, and it was an odd one. Nate and Robyn had their backpacks locked inside heavy steel mesh bags that didn’t allow anyone to snoop through pockets or anything, however it didn’t prevent someone from cutting a buckle off from Nate’s bag. A weird thing to steal, we can only assume that someone had broken the buckle on their own bag and that Nate’s was a match to it so they just took his.

We left our bags in the lock up and walked down the street towards the Larco Mar beach. At the end of the street was a seaside mall with balconies to look down at the greenish blue surf.

Next: Exploring Lima and some Great Tours >>

Peru! Finally....

Sorry it's taken so long for me to post about the Peru trip, I have been a bad blogger lately! So be prepared for a whole bunch of Peru posts as I take you day by day through our trip!

Mon 17 July 2006

Riding on buddy passes meant we had to leave home a little early just in case we didn't catch a plane the first day. Sure enough, we didn't get a plane Monday and had to crash at a Best Western overnight.

Tue 18 July 2006

The flight out to Peru was packed about as full as they could get it. They loaded every single seat in that plane, and even filled first class up with children, which I've never seen happen before. It was a long flight, but to make it worse a volcano erupted directly in our flight path forcing the plane to go clear out and around that area and making us arrive several hours late.

The Lima airport was completely packed with drivers claiming to be taxis, at least two or three hundred of them packed shoulder to shoulder just outside the arrival zone. We'd heard LOTS of stories of people accepting a ride from one of these drivers. Many of them only made it a block from the airport before the driver pulled over and took every single possession they owned and left them on the side of the road without clothes, shoes or a penny to their name.

Without their passports or anything to identify themselves, victims had to spend weeks at the embassy trying to verify who they were before finally managing to get back to their home countries without ever seeing anything of Peru other than the airport and embassy.

We knew the risks, so we had called our hotel before we got on the plane in Atlanta and had them send a taxi meet us. The trick was actually finding OUR taxi among the hundreds of drivers out there trying to pull us away. Also, because our plane was late, we were very worried that our taxi may have given up and left us!

Jason had the rest of us wait out of the reach of the drivers near the airport security while he attempted to find our taxi. He's a big guy, and speaks Spanish fluently, so he had the best chance of getting through the crowd and back to us safely.

It took us almost half an hour to find our taxi driver, and I'm not sure who was more relieved, him or us! He must have been waiting there for several hours and been getting close to giving up on us. With his experienced guidance we made it through the parking lot to his car and gratefully piled inside.

As we pulled out of the airport our driver powered up all our windows and locked the doors. We all kind of looked at each other uncomfortably, wondering if we'd been duped into the wrong taxi, but our driver quickly explained that it was not safe for us to drive around with the windows down or the door unlocked. He also suggested that we take off any jewelry, watches, and even our sunglasses which might tempt thieves.

He explained that this portion of Lima was very dangerous, and that it wasn't unheard of for thieves to snatch items from cars that were stopped at street lights or as passengers were loading or unloading.

The area around the airport looked like a burned out city, a lot of the buildings were boarded up, missing doors, windows and even entire walls and ceilings. Broken glass, razor wire, armed security on the streets. There was shocking poverty, and it was easy to understand why the crime rate might be so high in this area.

As we drove the scene gradually became more and more metropolitan. We were passing out of the ghettos and into the nicer portion of Lima. We parked across the street from the Loki Hostel and quickly unpacked our luggage. It was very late, and we were being watched closely by the teenage locals loitering on the street.

My super sexy husband protectively placed himself between myself and the locals as we walked up to the locked and barred entrance of the hostel. The taxi driver rang a bell positioned beneath a security camera near the door and someone on the other end of that camera unlocked the door for us to enter.

There was a long hallway ending in a wide stairway, which we dutifully began to climb yet were quickly halted and awed by the giant stained glass mural near the top! It was huge, and absolutely gorgeous!

Sadly my camera was currently buried deep in my bag, and we were all exhausted. Eagerly we completed our climb, checked in at the front desk, and retreated to our rooms.

Despite parties all night long on the top floor, the music was muffled, and I was asleep the minute my head hit the pillow.

Next: Miraflores Peru >>

The Cold Blooded Collection

Just as I've failed to mention my darling sugar gliders, I've also failed to detail my growing cold blooded addiction!

In 2007 I started collecting and breeding various species of geckos, and a few other reptiles. I went through my "snake phase" back in my teens, so this time I've focused entirely on the four legged reptiles. I tried out a few different species including some of the dragons (water, mountain horned, etc), basilisk, geckos, and finally settled on leopard geckos. They have a vast array of color and color potential that hasn't even been fully grasped yet. Some potential combinations haven't even been attempted yet! The hidden geneticist in me drools at the possibilities!

So far the leopard gecko proves to be an ideal pet, very gentle and calm by nature, and very easy to care for.I consider the green iguana and how often they are purchased as infants only to become too large and too dangerous to keep as adults. Or the ball python, as calm and quite as a mouse, unless your hand happens to smell like the family cat or puppy, than your life may be in danger. Leopard geckos never grow too large, have minimal care and feeding requirements, and make awesome pets no matter what their age. To me they are ideal pets for any reptile fan.

My goal with these geckos will be to create a slightly larger (easier grasped and held) gecko, with more vibrant color, a calm and gentle disposition and excellent health. The genes are already out there, they've already been discovered, they just need to be combined in the right way!

Sugar Gliders, little pouched clowns!

I have lot of catching up to do! Firstly, new pets and not-really-new-but-not-yet-mentioned pets: The Sugar Gliders

The sugar gliders that I was just getting into back when I started this blog have had several sets of babies, that I failed to mention here. Those little babies have all been sold now accept one little girl which I'm keeping. I've also bought a few more gliders, including two leucistics (white with black eyes), a mosiac (spotted) and a trio that all carry albino!

While my first two darlings were a standard gray and a white faced blonde, I'm now getting more into the genetic potential of these darling babies and working towards breeding better quality, health and temperment into some of the gorgeous colors that have been developed.

Back in the late 80's and early 90's (Yikes, a feel old!) I was a rapt and devoted student of genetics, learning a lot about how things such as color, size and health can be selectively developed and altered to create new or better versions of the parents. I'll admit that sugar glider don't breed nearly as fast as the rats and mice that I bred and studied all those years, but the same rules apply here. I'm eagerly planning out the future of my beautiful sugar babies and hoping that I will eventually produce some of the largest, healthiest and sweetest tempered gliders out there!

My goal is to improve not only on the intensity and lustre of the colors but the gliders themselves!