Kira and I have successfully left the Bermuda Triangle of Copacabana, Bolivia. A bus to La Paz and a full day and a half of searching resulted in us dropping some hefty cash for a plane ticket to Buenos Aires. It's strange though, how the place followed us... we woke up yesterday and found ourselves sharing a cab with an Englishman we had met there, and during out layover in Santa Cruz chatted for a bit with a Spaniard who had left the day before us. As Kira described it, right now we want nothing to do with the place, but it also feels in a way as if we will never leave it. I really did have an amazing time, it was just absolutely ridiculous.
We are now staying with friends here in Buenos Aires, for a few days of rest and good showers. Thank goodness!
Here is Kira in Aguas Calientes drinking the beverage Chicha, formerly drunken only from Moche sex pots (you've seen them). It's a beer made out of corn, and only very recently we found out that they make it by someone chewing on the plant and then stewing it for a long time. Kira drank the entire cup, despite it's horrible taste, to appease the Pachamama for her absence at our offering. Believe me, it's disgusting.
In the nearly 2-hour taxi ride from the airport (novices... getting lost... you know it's bad when the extranjeras you're driving have to tell you how to get to where you're going) I felt almost like I was coming home from the airport at Raleigh/Durham. Maybe it's because I've always left there at night, and BsAs is by far the most westernized place I've been in ages... or maybe it's because this whole time I've had it in my mind
that a plane is what would take me home, and so my subconscious told me that I was getting off a plane and going home. Whatever it is, it made me miss home more than I have yet. I'm almost tired of the first thing I always say to someone is "Hola, que tal, me llamo Abi."Here us a view if Cusco from the balcony of a cute little cafe we had dinner in. This was a pretty gray day, and getting near sunset, so it doesn't show the beauty that truly is Cusco. I don't know why, but from Cusco up to now I haven't been taking many photos... there are exactly nine photos from our last adventure in Copacabana, which is strange since it was so intense. I don't have ANY pictures of our buddies there... strange.
Here are Kira and Denis climbing up out of the Incan tunnels. Sweet, no? It'd be crazy to take Outing Club there and do some Incan reenactments... maybe we could even go caving in warpaint and pretend to fight conquistadores when we find our way out. I've got to say it was pretty sweet.
View from the plane between La Paz and Santa Cruz. I was trying to capture what it looks like from above, but photos from planes are never very clear... But here is what La Paz looks like from above. Remember those cartoons when we were kids where somebody ran off of a cliff, looked around a bit scared, then fell to the ground a whistling noise and puff of smoke below? And how the ground is flatflatflatflat and then there is a body-shaped hole going straight down? That's kind of what the city looks like. Flat altiplano, then sudden dropoff into the city, which for some reason was built on incredibly steep mountainsides instead of the smooth plain. It's pretty crazy looking though, especially since I didn't realize it was so sudden when I was down there.
This is our buddy Giorgio right after they bought us a bit of dinner... agucharra, or COW HEART. Yes, that is corazòn del toro. With ajì, it's unbelievably delicious and deathly spicy. Without ajì, soooooo good. We went on to have a real dinner of one of the best burgers I've ever had, and it all was under $1.
"How do we get out of here?"With red wine bought on the street, strawberry cookies, a Toblerone white chocolate, cut-up maps, a cigarette, and cuddled up in our intensely comfortable sleeping bags. This is an image of us trying to figure out what happened to us in Copacabana, how to leave, and getting ready for the next night of wildness.
And here we are right after we bought those plane tickets in La Paz! Note the incredible joy on our faces... This is also right before we
went and relaxed/rewarded ourselves at a local Bolivian spa. I like the trend we have... a week or so of really intense travelling days, followed by some sort of beautifying activity and then more intense days of traveling. It works well.
Twenty days. At least three destinations. Time is flying, time is crawling.
I still love the girl I'm with, which is one of the best blessings. How would it be for such a friendship to be ruined by too much time together? Horrible.
New travelling mates.
New accents. (So far, Bolivians are easiest to understand, then Peruvians, Colombians, Chileans, Argentinians, and Brazilians. Brazilian-tinted Spanish is probably the most gorgeous. But I'm always in love with Chileno,po!)
New everything, always!
And I'm still living life 'til it hurts... and loving every moment.
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