Confessions of a Loser (of things)

Team morale hit an all-time low back in La Paz, Bolivia about a week ago. I lost the flash drive with all the pictures of the past four months on it. Cue sad face. Fear not, for all is not lost, only most of it. We still have the blog pictures and we put some up on photobucket.com, and I even have a few on Facebook. I think that this unfortunate event may haunt me for eternity. I can picture Beth, old and gray, telling all the grandkids about our exotic adventures and saying something like... "Well I would show you all the pictures but Grandpa lost them all in La Paz." At that point I would hang my head in shame while my own grandkids heckled me for my actions 40 years before. Anyway, we don´t even know for sure that all these digital pictures will even last that long. While we are on the subject, I lost my jacket and the headphone splitter so that we could listen to the Ipod at the same time. I almost lost my other jacket and my passport, but they were successfully recovered.

Let´s move on shall we and talk about adventure and pretty things. Over the last few weeks we have been doing some smaller hikes. Outside La Paz, we did a trek called El Choro which was a gruelling 4 day hike on an old Incan trade route through the mountains. What made it rough was that we began the hike at 4800 meters and descended down to 2200 meters. I have never been so sore in my life from hiking. Our knees were aching. It was a beautiful walk through both high altitude mountains and lush jungle valleys. It passed through towns where people still spoke Quechua and scratched out an existence by farming land that was 1 or 2 days walk from the nearest road.

After escaping the city of La Paz, we headed for Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titikaka. For my entire life, Lake Titikaka was just some lake that made me chuckle in my youth. (I still think that it is kinda funny, but now know it means "Rock of the Puma" in Quechua and Aymara.) It is a spectacular place. The sapphire blue waters are surrounded by mountainous terrain. We spent most of our time on Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun). It is where Incan legend places the beginning of the world. Beth thought that this was her favorite landscape so far. We spent 3 days traversing the island inspecting ruins, finding solitary campsites in empty coves along the lake, and trying to figure out where exactly we were. The locals on the island were exceptionally kind and helpful. Lake Titikaka has a kind of Mediterrenean feel to it and is definitely worth a visit.

We are currently hanging out in Cusco, Peru where we are preparing for another hike. It will be 6-8 days depending on the weather and other logistics. After the hike we will visit Macchu Picchu.