Of canyons and lakes with funny names by Aaron

And just like that the car was not sold.  If you remember from my last post, we had looked into selling good ol’ St. Pheonix to a guide from Cachora named Celestino.  Though not as epically disastrous as the Titanic, I believe our failed attempt at sell the car was on par in the Hindenburg.  Okay, not really.  All it did was delay a day a half.

Anyways, we left Cuzco and headed south for the small town of Chivay.  Chivay is located beside Colca Canyon which is, at it’s deepest,  twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.  I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the Grand Canyon, but speaking from personal experience, I can confirm that whoever named it may not have had a great imagination but they did describe the canyon quite well.  Since we read that Colca Canyon is twice as deep we were really exciting.  We’re talking as excited as the Southwest Illinois Girl Scout troupe finding out they booked the exact same convention hall that is hosting a Justin Bieber and One Direction autograph signing.  Hans was behind the wheel as we honked, squeezed, and caromed our way out of the crazy traffic of Cuzco.  We were cruising, living the dream, wind in our hair, tunes pumping over the speakers.  Well, that may not have been the case.  As a history major, I think it is safe to say that was a bit of revisionist history.  What actually happened was we went a couple hot hours with terrible speakers gurgling our tunes and then the car decided to stop.  It was doing that stupid Whum! Whum! Whum!  We let her cool for a while and clunked up and up and up hills and mountains.  Suddenly we realized that there were no trees and we were cruising along a gravel road above the tree line.  Our Garmin GPS said we were at 4,700 “meters” (roughly 8,000 weasels stacked end to end) above sea level.  It was getting dark and we were glad to see a small town in the distance.  We were less glad when we saw how terrible grungy the town looked but at least we had 3 beds at a hotel.

We went out to eat at a local hang out joint that night and ate soup, rice and alpaca.  After the meal Sheldon mentioned not feeling well and suddenly seemed to pass out.  Thankfully he had not actually passed out but it was a bit scary seeing what the altitude had done to him.  We got him some coco leaved to chew (the locals say it helps) and went back to our room.  It was a fitful night of sleep because, to put it bluntly, being at 15,000 feet is really cold at night.  The next morning we woke up early and got out of dodge as quickly as possible.  By afternoon, after providing a taxi service for a lady, we arrived at Chivay.  It was a little too late to see the canyon so we hung out and ate some incredible fried chicken for $2.  This was a theme in Chivay: eat fried chicken and other amazing food at their outdoor market.  We got up the next morning excited to explore the colossal canyon.  The car chugged up the gravel road with the same effort as a building inspector in Peru.  We finally got to Mirador de los Condors (Lookout of the Condors) and looked down the famed canyon.  We were all a bit disappointed.  Though it was really far down, it wasn’t as far down as we were expecting.  It was kind of like opening a present on Christmas and hoping for pants that were 4,160 meters long but when you looked at them they didn’t looked that long.  We were told that the canyon got deeper the farther you went so we decided to start walking down the road and give St. Phoenix a rest.  Shortly into our walk a French couple picked us up in a new rental car.  We were thankful for the ride and at the same time contemplating if we could “accidentally” push the couple over the edge of the canyon and take their car.  After some discussion we decided it wasn’t a good idea.  We got to a town farther down the canyon and went to some lookouts to see if it was deeper.  It seemed to be  but we still didn’t think it looked ridiculously deep: just really deep.  We took a 3 hour hike back to our car and chugged all the way to Chivay.

Off we chugged, the next morning, to the city of Puno.  Puno is located beside Lake Titicaca and we wanted to explore the world’s highest major lake.  We still couldn’t get over 80 km an hour (just google what that is in miles) but we finally got to the city in the afternoon.  We found a nice hotel where Hans was able to watch FC Barcelona get slaughtered by Beyrn Munich while Sheldon and I took the car the car to a mechanic.  We told the mechanic we thought the fuel pump was bad but since he couldn’t get that part (we assume this because he didn’t tell us much) he just cleaned the carburetor.  We hoped that this was the solution but as we learned later this was about as helpful as a weasel in your sock drawer.  For those of you not informed on a weasel’s habits, one in your sock drawer is far from helpful.  That night we explored the city and found a market that would sell you goat heads.  Not very appetizing but we all agreed they would be great souvenirs for our sisters.

We had booked a tour to take us out to a reed island and a natural island in the middle of thee lake.  In the morning we got up and waited for a guy to pick us up like the tour guide said would happen.  The man was only 20 minutes late but we were relieved he came at all.  We got on the boat with about 20 other people and started out for the open waters of the great Lago Titikaka.  The boat was hardly going at all, however.  We later learned that the boat was made in a way that it could only go about as fast as a…really slow boat.  Great engineering.  After 2 hours we stopped at a reed island.  These islands are made by natives who wanted to stay out in the water and catch fish to sell on the mainland.   The islands are made by taking chunks of reeds, and the dirt below them, and tying them together with more reeds.  Thus, you have your own personal island.  The one we went to was about 100 ft by 100 ft and had its own amusement park with roller coasters.  No, of course not.  It had several huts and some places to buy trinkets.  It was really touristy but still interesting.  The second island we went to was a natural island that was known for its textiles.  When we got their we were surprised at how little textiles their were for sale.  Not much was happening on the island.  Maybe they were getting ready for the UFC fight that night on Fox Sports Net, but I doubt it.  After a great, but more expensive, lunch then we wanted, we hopped back on board the boat and slowly crawled back to land.  The next morning we were hoping to get to La Paz, Bolivia.  This only seemed possible if she gave a better effort than a blind trapeze artist.