Lake Titicaca, Bolivia

Isla del Sol panorama. Seen from the Puerta del Sol, Yumani, towards the southern end of the island. Lake Titicaca, Bolivia

Arrived in Copacabana, Bolivia, on the shore of Lake Titicaca on Monday, I think? We accidentally got ourselves booked into a really fancy hotel, which was nice because (like everywhere we’ve visited in Bolivia) Copacabana is freezing cold and we had the luxury of an electric heater AND hot shower in our room. You can’t even imagine what a welcome treat that was.
Copacabana is a little tourist town on the shore of Lake Titicaca, with lots of tourist boats in the harbor and beautiful views along the lake and the green hilly shores.

brightly colored boats. At the beach in Copacabana, Lake Titicaca, Bolivia.

I’m about to start working(!), the semester will begin on Monday Feb. 1st, so I took half a day to start preparing my online curriculum, and the other half of the day to relax a bit and wander around town. Bought more warm clothes at some of the many touristy shops.
The next day, we had considered doing a 17-km hike along the lakeshore, but upon further research, the “hiking trail” is actually just walking along an auto road, so we decided to skip it and head straight out to Isla del Sol instead. We took an hour-and-a-half ferry ride on a big motorboat, arriving at the town of Yumani, on the southern end of the island. From the ferry docks we had to climb up the astoundingly huge “Inca Staircase” to get up to the town.

had to climb up a zillion stairs to get from the ferry dock up to the town. At 3800 meters elevation, it was pretty hard to breathe, let alone climb up this many stairs!

Isla del Sol, Lake Titicaca, Bolivia

Isla del Sol is a beautiful, green, rocky island in Lake Titicaca, covered with Incan ruins. Supposedly the Incan sun god was born here. There are no cars or roads, the population is about 800 families spread amongst several towns. The land all around the towns is covered in beautifully terraced farmland, and the streets and front yards of the towns are filled with donkeys, pigs, sheep, and llamas.

busy streets on Isla del Sol

We identified lots of quinoa and potato plants, and many fields planted with some other crop that I couldn’t identify. I expected the island to be more touristy; the towns were certainly busy with backpackers, but the island itself is so beautiful that it wasn’t overwhelming, and it seems like the people in the towns also do lots of farming and fishing, in addition to hosting travellers from around the world.

town and terraced farmland. Isla del Sol, Lake Titicaca, Bolivia

We stayed the night in an icky hospedaje (our room was unfortunately flooded and moldy and of course freezing cold!) with a beautiful front terrace overlooking the town of Yumani and the lake below. Took an afternoon hike down to the southernmost tip of the island where we visited some Incan ruins, El Templo del Sol.
Hiked back in time for a heartbreakingly beautiful sunset, with the orange light reflecting off the sides of Mt. Illimani in the distance. Ate roasted lake trout for dinner! Mike read somewhere that trout and kingfish were introduced to Lake Titicaca in the 1930′s, to bring more protein into the local diet.

alpine light on Mt. Illimani, with the Isla de la Luna in middle ground. Lake Titicaca, Bolivia

In the morning we were very excited to get out of our icky room bright and early, even though it was pouring rain. We loaded up our backpack and pulled on plastic ponchos over our warmest clothing. Hiked out of town on the trail that leads to the northern end of the island.

hiking trail, Isla del Sol, Lake Titicaca, Bolivia

Despite the rain it was a really fantastically beautiful hike, along the tops of all the highest peaks on the island. From such a height, we could see the island spread out below us to either side, the lake and through occasional breaks in the clouds, the surrounding mountains in the distance.

rainy view along the coastline of the Isla del Sol. Lake Titicaca, Bolivia.

By the time we made it to the northern end of the Island, the rain let up a little bit. We wanted to catch the last boat back to Copacabana, so we didn’t have time to visit the island’s biggest Incan ruins, but we felt like the hike up there had been reward enough in itself.
We were exhausted and fell asleep on the ferry ride back to Copacabana.

puma-headed reed boat carrying tourists around Lake Titicaca. Copacabana, Bolivia

Had a fancy dinner overlooking the lake, and enjoyed a good night’s sleep in a dry hostel. In the morning we caught a bus (again, in the pouring rain!) to Cuzco, Peru.

La Paz, Bolivia

old building in La Paz

Our biggest news of the moment is that we got sick. We both got some kind of parasite and got completely destroyed for about a week. We’d looked forward to spending a few days in La Paz, but ended up staying here for 8 days, most of them in bed and/or staggering to/from the bathroom. Our hostel set us up with a nice doctor who happened to speak english and he got us all sorted out and de-parasited. Despite that nasty ordeal, I really fell in love with La Paz and wish we’d had more time here!
Anyway, we arrived in La Paz on an overnight bus from Tupiza, getting in very tired at 6:00 on a Sunday morning. We expected to find the town quiet at this hour, but as soon as we walked out the front door we found ourselves in the middle of a parade. We wandered on down to the huge Iglesia de San Francisco and were immediately overwhelmed by traffic, mothers carrying babies, vendors selling everything, churchgoers and heaving, colorful crowds of all kinds.

crowded street. La Paz, Bolivia

For me, this seems like quintessential La Paz. Everywhere we went, it was always wildly chaotic, festive, crowded and crazy with colors and decorative details. A large percentage of the population of La Paz are indigenous people from various groups (the two main indigenous languages spoken are Amayra and Quechua, but I think there are a wide variety of different groups represented), and that gives the city a flavor distinctly different from any other city I know. La Paz is incredibly high up (around 3600 meters elevation!) and very cold, surrounded by snow-capped mountains on all sides, even in summer. The city is set on mountainsides and all the streets are steep, which makes it slow going for foreigners unaccustomed to the lack of oxygen at this elevation. The main street, El Prado, basically follows the bottom of the valley that forms the city, while the city climbs up the hillsides and mountains on either side. No matter where you are in the city, to get to the main street, you just walk downhill.

mountain city. La Paz, Bolivia

The architecture is a mixture of really elaborately decorative old buildings and modern, shiny towers. The part of the city where we stayed, downtown, has a really old feel – beautiful historic buildings, some newly painted but many with a deeply worn texture, centuries of peeling paint and wear. The textiles here are incredible, there is so much talent and tradition in the elaborate and bright textiles that are used and sold everywhere.

amazing patterns in wood. La Paz, Bolivia

We ended up being in La Paz at a really festive time; while we were sick, President Evo Morales was inaugurated for his second term in office. The first day, he attended a summit of indigenous nations just outside of La Paz and did a formal and very festive all-day inauguration ceremony there. Evo Morales is the first ever president of indigenous heritage (all the previous leaders of Bolivian were of European descent) in a nation that is predominantly indigenous, so his appearance at this summit was an important first. The second day, he was formally inaugurated in the government building in La Paz, and the party moved in to the city. From our hospital room we saw bits of the ceremony on the TV and on the second day we heard parades drumming and marching through the streets outside our window.
Then Sunday we were feeling better and tried to head out to see some museums, but it turned out to be another holiday, Alsitas, January 24th, a Bolivian holiday where you buy miniature versions of things that you hope to have in the coming year. Tiny houses, tiny stacks of dollars, tiny cars, tiny food, etc! When we wandered out towards the main square in La Paz, we found the streets choked with vendors selling tiny toy EVERYTHING – there were tiny buses, tiny vegetables, even tiny masters’ degrees! It was impossible to get around and visit museums, but it was exciting to see all the action. Every vendor had a pile of hot coals burning, and it seemed like the thing to do was buy your miniatures, toss some incense or scented wood on the coals, and wave your miniature bounty in the smoke for good luck. We saw a few statues around town of Ekeko, the Bolivian god of abundance.

Alsitas – Bolivian holiday of abundance

the one museum we managed to visit was really cool: the Museum of Musical Instruments on Calle Jaen. They had tons of crazy and interesting Bolivian and world instruments, and they had a great section where you can play instruments! I really loved the traditional ceremonial dancers’ masks too.

Museo de Instrumentos Musicales. La Paz, Bolivia

Other noteworthy stuff in La Paz: the Witches’ Market, where you can buy potions and incenses claiming to cure any problem from indigestion to poverty to a broken heart. They also sell a lot of dried llama fetuses, which are apparently supposed to be buried near the foundations of your home for good luck.

potions, lotions, teas, incenses, etc. at the Witches’ Market.

And “Cholita” wrestling, which is like a Bolivian version of Mexican wrestling, with the twist that some of the wrestlers are ladies, dressed up in the traditional skirt-braids-and-bowler-hat outfits that most of the indigenous women wear here. The whole event was really silly, but fun to watch.

Cholita wrestling. La Paz, Bolivia

Southwest Bolivia jeep tour

We left Tupiza early, in a Land rover with our driver Santos and his wife Silvia(?) and a young Argentine couple from Buenos Aires (Laura and Fernando; we were randomly put together but they turned out to be really nice). Drove out of town up a dry riverbed, and passed workers repairing a damaged section of the train line (the one that we’d hoped to take to Tupiza). We passed red cliffs and bounced up a steep, rock and gravel switchback road before stopping to look out at the Sillar de San Pablo de Lípez, where the earth drops away steeply on either side of the road, and there are crazy red rock formations carved by rainfall, I guess. The land is so steep and dry, I think whenever it rains everything just floods and crumbles away.

Sillar San Pablo de Lípez

Then onwards in a bumpy, hairpin ascent. As we all gasped and tittered about the scary road, Santos turned back and said “Don´t worry about it, I’m a great driver, you’re going to be completely safe!” with a huge grin. We bounced and jostled up and up and up, passed grazing llamas and rock corrals on the hillsides, went through one tiny town with adobe houses and terraced gardens and a single baby llama wandering in the street. We had a delicious picnic lunch (tamales and sandwiches) and climbed about on the hills a bit (slowly, in the thin high air), then jostled onwards.

grazing llamas with curious babies

high up, walking

our trusty jeep and Silvia preparing lunch

We stopped in a bigger town, San Vicente, which had a military base, a town hall, a church, and maybe 20 or 30 adobe houses. This is the capital of the Lípez province! (Population of Lípez is maybe 50,000 people and many many llamas.) Bumping onwards, the sky got darker and we could see rain in the distance, then spectacular lightning in the mountains ahead.

thunderstorm ahead

We pulled into San Antonio de Lípez (altitude 4,200 meters, population 430 people) around 5:00 and dragged our packs down from the roof of the jeep just as it started to hail. We’d left Tupiza amongst a caravan of other tour jeeps, but hadn’t seen much of the other jeeps all day; now they all turned up in the same town but stayed in different houses scattered around the village. We had a cozy tea time, then when the hail stopped we climbed up the nearby hill to see the town, watched a raucous, impromptu basketball game (tourists vs. local kids and dogs) and then Silvia served us a tasty dinner in one of the adobe rooms. Fell asleep under thick heavy piles of alpaca wool blankets, in very uncomfortable beds that were beautifully stenciled with bright flower patterns.

sunset in San Antonio de Lípez

Woke up at 5:30 am and had a breakfast of crackers and tea. Everyone was looking pretty wilted from altitude and restless sleep. We bounced off as the sun rose, and stopped at the ruins of the old San Antonio, an impressive town of many roofless, crumbling stone buildings, dark in the valley with the early sunlight burning orange on the mountain peaks above. Santos told us some old tale about two devils that lived in the town, and something about decadence and divorces and immoral living and some kind of curse – in explanation for why the town was abandoned. There were two different church buildings, one older and one newer, and it seemed like various parts of the town had been used and abandoned at different times since the 16th century. The newest buildings were from a fruitless mining exploration in the 1960′s. The town’s cemetery still had newish plastic flowers and Santos said that the farm families in the surrounding hillsides still bury their dead in that cemetery.

the old church, ruins of San Antonio de Lípez

ruins of San Antonio de Lípez with morning sun on the mountains beyond

Then onwards, up and down hills over dirt and mud roads, jiggling and bouncing mercilessly in the back of the jeep. Mike was feeling really sick and miserable and slept on my lap a lot. We stopped at a few different weirdly-colored lagoons, encrusted with natural borax or salt deposits around the edges and filled with flamingos. I had no idea that borax existed in nature like this, nor that flamingos were such fans of fetid-looking, crusty salty lagoons in the desert.

Laguna Verde. The green color comes from copper, chloride and some other minerals in the soil. In the wilderness of Lípez, southwest Bolivia

orange desert

Everything about the lagoons was beautiful but weird and sort of poisonous-looking. The strange colors of the various lagoons come from different minerals present in the soil. At mid-day we stopped at a natural hot spring to go swimming! It was my first time in a hot spring and I was super excited about it. It was hot and felt SO GOOD but then I got dizzy after a while and had to stagger out.

swimming in the hot springs

pastel paisaje. view from the hot springs.

Then onwards to more weird colored lagoons, then some stinky, sulfury geysers. We felt really fatigued from all the bouncy driving and were very happy to get to our night’s lodging, a spartan hospedaje in the middle of nowhere. We had a fantastic dinner from Silvia, and met some other nice backpackers from various parts of the world. By bed-time Mike felt much better but I felt bad and I had a horrible, sickly, sleepless night.
Next morning we got to sleep in until 6:00, then headed off to see the Laguna Colorada, the biggest and most spectacular of all the salt lakes. It is bright red because of algae that thrives in the warm, mineral-rich, salty water. There are three dormant volcanoes reflected in the red lagoon.

Laguna Colorada & volcano

a bubbling hot spring. Laguna Colorada, Southwest Bolivia

we saw a thousand flamingos at their breeding ground. Laguna Colorada in the wilderness of Lípez, southwest Bolivia

It’s also home to gazillions of flamingos, all three of the South American flamingo species go there to breed every year. Then onwards through smooth, sandy desert. Stopped to see a grouping of weirdly-shaped volcanic rocks, including the Arbol de Piedra (Rock Tree).

El Arbol de Piedra

Then we drove on and on and on, descending in elevation, and even Santos complained that the roads were horrible. We stopped for lunch in a lava field, an undulating sea of strange red forms, tons of rock formations to climb, nooks and crannies and archways and in the distance, an active volcano trailing a wisp of smoke from the cone.

mike. lava fields

We stopped in a little town of San Juan and saw a museum about the indigenous history of the area, quinoa farming, and the local historic practices of mummification. On the road out of town we were hailed down by a group of confused Czech guys driving their own jeep (on all of these roads, the only vehicles we pass are farmers or other jeep tours) who asked which way to Chile. Santos said “See that mountain over yonder? Go there, and then Chile is to the left.” I translated this into English for them and then they headed off into the dust, apparently satisfied with the directions. We crossed a small salt flat and then the road hugged a wall of elaborately-shaped cliffs. Long long long ago, when the salt flat used to be an inland sea, these cliffs were the rocky shores and they were completely covered by coral; the elaborately shaped rocks are coral skeletons, and if you look way up above, you can see the line where they stop was once the water level. Our night’s lodging was a “hotel” built entirely from salt, perched up among the cliffs. It was super basic but really cozy and comfortable and we were both immensely thankful for and improved by a good night’s sleep.
On the last day, we had to get up at 4:30 am in time to load up the jeep and get out into the grand Uyuni Salt Flats in time for the sunrise. The Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat in the world; it’s just white and white and white and white and flat in every direction as far as the eye can see. As the sun started to creep above the horizon, tiny blue lines of mountains appeared in the distance, one by one. We spent the day putzing around the salt flats, running and taking silly photos on the blank background. We stopped at a coral-and-cactus-covered island, Isla de Pescado (because when seen from the air it looks like a fish shape). There’s a pretty fancy visitor setup there, a beautiful hiking trail that goes up to the top of the island. Looking down from above, it really looks like the island is surrounded by ocean. When we climbed back down, a dozen or more jeeps had arrived and the picnic area was swarming with backpackers. (a lot of shorter tours leave from Uyuni so as we got close to Uyuni we started seeing a lot more jeeps). Silvia served us a last delicious picnic breakfast feast, and we got acquainted with a very friendly ostrich who was apparently brought out to the island as a wee chick and left there (poor thing), and now he makes his living begging and stealing snacks from tourists. As we cooed and snapped photos of him, the guides shooed him away and said “watch out! he’ll steal anything he can get his hands on.” After breakfast, we went on through the salt flats, and again we could see nothing but white in every direction. The driving was mercifully smooth over the flat, hard salt. We made it all the way to the opposite end of the flats, stopped at a little salt-processing town for lunch, and then were dropped off in Uyuni, saying fond goodbyes to our guides and fellow travelers. Very very very excited to take a warm shower (first in five days!) and filled with an inexplicably intense urge to eat some pizza.

Tupiza, Bolivia

Arrived in Tupiza, Bolivia (elevation 3,160 meters) on Jan. 9th, late at night, after a long, bumpy bus ride out of Villazon. The only road isn’t much of a road, it’s just a collection of tire tracks across dried mud flats. Sometimes the double-decker bus pitched down into a ravine, and then the driver would stop and get out to check the depth of the river before driving through the water and up out the other side. After dark fell, I was constantly imagining the road to be even scarier than it probably was. We stopped halfway through for dinner; beside the road there was a shelter and a line of ladies with steaming pots of stew and rice. Hungry passengers piled out and, after choosing a tasty stew, were handed an enameled metal bowl and spoon to slurp their dinner standing up, then hand the bowl back to the proprietor. It looked pretty good but we’d already eaten (another) roast chicken before boarding so we weren’t hungry. We got in to Tupiza exhausted from the scary bus ride and the elevation and crawled straight into bed at a hostel.
When we woke up in the morning we saw that the hills and cliffs around Tupiza (which had looked gray in the night-time) were bright red and orange and stripey. We felt pretty feeble and spent most of the day in Tupiza resting and drinking lots of water. I think the altitude has really made both of us sickly and easily tired; it´s hard to say because traveling is exhausting anyway, but I think the altitude makes us feel breathless and sort of dazed and slow-moving all the time. We try to deal with it by relaxing a lot and not demanding much of ourselves (which is how vacation should be anyway). We started taking altitude-sickness pills in Tupiza (they call it MAL DE ALTURA) which made our hands and feet tingle oddly. And we try to drink coca-leaf tea, which is supposed to help too.
When we ventured out in the late afternoon to explore Tupiza, we found a small and pretty city, the fancier buildings with smooth painted facades and plainer buildings with exposed adobe brick walls. The adobe bricks kind of look like they’re melting in the rain, but since it doesn’t rain much here I guess they’re pretty durable. Like most of the towns we’ve visited in Bolivia and Northern Argentina, there’s a glorious church and municipal building facing the main plaza (Tupiza’s plaza is big and lush with trees and grass), a touristy part and a locals part to the city.

the main municipal building in Tupiza, Bolivia

Tupiza street, mountains in the distance. The streets were all pretty deserted because it was a Sunday afternoon.

Hairdresser shop, Tupiza, Bolivia

The tourist district has hotels and hostels, gift shops selling hand crafts, and at least 8 pizza restaurants boasting American/European style meals (Pizza! Breakfast! Porridge! Pancakes! Burgers!). Then the rest of the town is devoted to local commerce and houses. The restaurants outside of the tourist area seem to all serve stews and soups, and roasted chicken. Probably other stuff too, but we haven’t figured it out yet. The town markets are always fantastic, with tons of stalls selling fruits and veggies, dried corn and grains and pastas, packaged snacks and colorful plastic goods of all kinds, all manned by sleepy-looking ladies or kids.

market in Tupiza. Evo Morales (Bolivia’s first indigenous president) was recently re-elected so there are Evo campaign materials everywhere.

Most of the ladies in Bolivia wear the most amazing styles, a bowler hat or straw hat, long braid or braids, sweater or pinafore/apron thing, and a knee-length gathered skirt with a sort of built-in bustle thing that makes the hips look wide, and orangey-colored thick tights with sandals. I am a big fan of this style but I feel odd about photographing people I don’t know, especially in a weird objectifying touristy way, so I haven’t taken pictures. I wish I could wear the same outfit but I think I would look totally ridiculous in it, so I just admire!

crossing the border to Bolivia

We turned up in La Quiaca yesterday evening and stayed in a weird but clean and cheap hotel for the night. Woke up early to make the border crossing, in hopes of getting to the train station in time to get tickets for this afternoon’s train. The border crossing was OK, waited in line with a bunch of other backpackers to exit Argentina, then walked across a high bridge and waited in another line to enter Bolivia. Wish we’d known in advance that we were supposed to have brought extra passport photos for our Bolivia tourist visa, but we got it worked out without too much trouble.

crossing the bridge that separates La Quiaca, Argentina from Villazon, Bolivia

Immediately across the border into Bolivia, the city got kind of crazy and intense! The street is super crowded, there are tons of money-changing places and little shops offering every possible kind of bright colored plastic stuff, giant sacks of coca leaves, old ladies dressed in skirts and bowler hats, squatting beside the street selling steaming pots of stew and rice that looks delicious. Intense smells of stewing meat, sweet kool-aid smells, and toxic solvent smells all mixed together. We tripped over a furry little severed-goat-foreleg which was lying in the middle of the street. We made our way up from the border into Villazon, and took a long sweaty walk with our stupid heavy packs all the way to the train station, to find that it’s closed – train service is suspended because of heavy rains. Backtracked to the bus station and bought tickets for the next train to Tupiza, checked our packs in the very dodgy looking bus station (As of press date I am not sure whether or not we will ever see our packs again. I will admit that I would be a bit relieved to find them gone). Then we had 9 hours to kill in Villazon. Wandered into the public market which was honestly really awesome and fun. Another crazy jumble of people and things and foods and smells and sounds. People speak spanish here, but we also heard indigenous dialects (probably Quechua?) that we couldn’t understand. There are tons of used clothes for sale here, stuff that comes from the United States with aid organizations, a lot of the items still have Salvation Army pricetags on them. We bought watermelon slices, roasted chicken, and since I’m almost done with my knitting project I got supplies for my next project- an embroidery hoop and floss, and a few used t-shirts to practice embroidery on. They sell everything in the market, it’s great. Then we hunkered down on a park bench to read and embroider for a while. Good, relaxing Saturday afternoon!

our first (and second) meal in Bolivia: roasted chicken. Pretty tasty. Note the Bolivian version of coca-cola which came with our meal.

we waited for a bus in the attic above the bus station. There was a pay bathroom (two Bolivianos = US$0.28) where you have to scoop water out of a giant bucket and dump it in the toilet bowl to flush. The waiting room doubled as the youth boxing club; they were setting up for a boxing match but unfortunately we had to catch our bus before the match started.

South America tour ideas

So, the idea was to not plan our trip too much – but of course we’re excited to travel and whenever we get a spare moment we can’t help ourselves from flipping through our dog-eared Lonely Planet and browsing through pictures, picking out which places we hope to see along the way. The only reservations we’ll make in advance are our first bus tickets out of Buenos Aires, our final flight home from Lima back to Buenos Aires, and we’ve reserved dates for the Choquequirao hiking trip in the middle. In between those dates we’ll just see what we feel like doing and see what fits in. We’ve never really had enough free time to travel without set plans, so we’re looking forward to having the luxury of making it up as we go along. Also, we’ve heard that transport in Bolivia can be pretty unpredictable so it’s best to keep an open itinerary with lots of extra time for delays. Anyway here are some of the places we’re hoping we might see!

first step: January 1st, 6:00 pm overnight bus from Buenos Aires Retiro bus station to Salta, arrive in Salta at 1:00 pm on January 2nd.

Convento de San Francisco, Salta

Salta street

We’ve visited Salta before but we’ll be traveling with Andrew & Vickie, who’ve never been there, so we might stop over for a few days to see this beautiful colonial city and/or visit some of the surrounding countryside, perhaps Cafayate or Cachi.

Quebrada de Las Conchas (near Cafayate), Salta, Argentina

Cuesta del Obispo. The road from Salta to Cachi runs through the Valle Encantada (The Enchanted Valley).

Then northwards to Jujuy and the Quebrada de Humuhuaca, maybe stay a night in Purmamarca or Tilcara.

Purmamarca. Jujuy provincia, Argentina.

Camino del Colorado – Quebrado de Humuhuaca, Jujuy, Argentina

If we can fit it in, we are eager to visit the isolated mountainside village of Iruya, 4 hours’ bus ride from Humuhuaca, over steep hairpin gravel roads but it sounds like it’s worth the detour.

remote mountainside town of Iruya, Salta, Argentina

Then we’ll part ways with Andrew and Vickie, who will fly out of Jujuy back to Buenos Aires and then head back to the US.

We’ll head northwards and cross the border from Argentina into Bolivia at the border town of Villazon. From Villazon there’s a train that runs north on Tuesdays and Saturdays or something like that. We’re thinking of riding the train up to Tupiza, and then in Tupiza find a jeep tour to bring us out to the salt flats (a place you can really only visit with a tour guide and a jeep). After the salt flats we’ll end up in Uyuni, and continue northwards, we’re thinking of stopping in Potosi, probably Sucre, maybe Ororu or Cochabamba, then a few days in La Paz, then on to Lake Titicaca…

Arequipa, Peru, with volcano Misti in the distance

Monasterio Santa Catalina, Arequipa, Peru

Monasterio Santa Catalina, Arequipa, Peru

TO BE CONTINUED…