El Travel Blog

La Paz. Taken by Travis, who takes nice photos. You can view more of them here. 

By the way, I have made it very clear how terrified I am of The Packmule Ladies Wearing Tiny Little Bowler Hats. Looking at the mug on this lady (who probably threatened to tear Travis’s fingers off after he snapped this photo), can you really blame me?

Do I have room in my already-ripping backpack for a dried baby llama fetus or two?

Besides, who needs alpaca sweaters when you have a warm, cuddly dehydrated fetus to snuggle up to?

VERY IMPORTANT QUESTIONS. 

[At the Witch’s Market in La Paz]

Hello there, Collectivo Bus of La Paz.

I know you don’t believe in esoteric highbrow concepts like “caution” or “health and safety” or “capacity” or “personal space” or “traffic rules” or even “pedestrians,” but I want you to know I was really sad when I dropped my delicious 50 cent saltena while diving to save my life when you careened onto the sidewalk. 

Love, Erin

Trekking Isla del Sol with Maya and our new friend. Her name was something like Getman or Packman or Hitman but we never quite figured it out? She was positively insane and one of our favorite personalities on the trip. She wore a Bolivian blanket like a cape (adding to her superhero status), laughed like a raging lunatic, ate food off our plates, and told us ridiculous stories about “romantic encounters” while couch surfing across the continent. 

Maya and I rocking head to toe alpaca and petting some mules before almost missing our ferry from Isla del Sol to Copacobana in Bolivia.

I freaking love their faces. Resigned to a shitty long day of work ahead of them, yet not totally unhappy about it. They may as well be shrugging and sighing, “It’s a mule’s life, whaddayagonnado?”

Since Travis takes more, and better, photos than me, we have a little catching up to do. Get ready for a string of Bolivia and Machu Picchu photos…

 Here’s the main snack we ate in Bolivia, sweet puffed maize. It basically tasted like kid’s cereal only chewy and I kept a bag of it in my purse on the regular. 

From the salt flat tour we took an overnight bus to La Paz for more altitude-related fun. I enjoyed the city; it felt safe even though it’s supposedly not, it was cheap AS HELL and there were tons of wonderful markets and we ate and drank well. Our hostel (Artie’s Guest House) had a ridiculous midnight curfew, which simply meant we stayed out until 6.

We left with our friends Mike and Maya for Copacobana, on Lake Titicaca, which was very different from the other Copacabana. 

From there we went took a ferry (no vom!) to Isla del Sol, where we hiked, took in some ruins, ate trout and star gazed on the very precarious tin roof of our $2 a night hostel.

Also Travis had to pay 40 Bolovianos (enough to buy them a new jacuzzi) for breaking an already broken window.

The we somehow got suckered into paying too much to ride the local shithole overnight bus to Cuzco; crossing the border I got into a bit of a spat with one of those crazy Bolivian packmule ladies. These ladies are not to be messed with, they have gold teeth, wear tiny little bowler hats and big shiny skirts and shawls, are built like brickhouses, and at any given time are carrying 4-8 children, several chickens, and a pile of bread and apples on their backs. Anyhow, she started aggressively yelling at me and I nearly peed my pants.

We made it to Cuzco in one piece after what I observed to be several drug deals, a bribe, and three different police searches. One of our friends saw a live llama strapped to the top of a car. Don’t worry, the llama was blindfolded.

Llamas shit. A LLLOT. Somewhat related note: The entire country of Bolivia is BYOTP, and we didn’t BYO. Lesson learned. (Even less related: Some of our fellow travelers noted that in dire emergencies, they’ve used a local currency to wipe, apparently using a low denomination of a Vietnamese bill is actually cheaper than buying TP.)

Evvverybody took a series of mildly ridiculous photos to demonstrate the lack of perspective on the vast salt flats. Here’s one example.

Travis, Phil, me, and, of course, Natalie, at the Salt Flats.