PERU - The Uros & The Machu Picchu

Hola everybody,
We took a boat from Puno to see the Uros, also known as the "floating islands". The Uros are artificial islands made out of reed located on the Peruvian side of lake Titikaka.Their inhabitants rely on fishing and bird hunting and as we soon discovered...tourism...
If one can disregard the "shmaltzi" overdone act for the tourists, the idea that people actually live like this (in huts, on water in the middle of nowhere) is pretty overwhelming. We thought it could be a creative solution to the middle east problem... at least you don't have to pay "arnona"... though the islands themselves have to be maintained on a weekly bases to prevent them from sinking...

From Puno we took a bus ride to Cuzco. We got scammed by the tour agent who took a lot of money, but put us on a really cheep bus with the local villagers. The ride itself was a nightmare(or as Loni would put it a "HAVAYA"). It was an 8 hours ride without a toilet in a bus that smelled of people, who haven't showered for at least a couple of weeks. It was like a driving market - on each stop (and there were a lot of those) a noisy bunch of saleswomen climbed up and started pushing us everything from ponchos to hot cheese... at one point a christian missionary talked for a tedious hour about Jesus saving him from his drug addiction and stopping him from killing his father (he was BTW selling holly stones, because after Jesus touched him his eyesight became really bad after crying a lot... I would personally recommend some eye drops & a visit to the optometrist, instead of hanging out on fumy buses all day).

Cuzco is a really beautiful city, with stony narrow alleys and a great atmosphere... It reminded us of Prague...

Although, they have a really hard marketing tendency. They jump on you in the middle of the street and refuse to acknowledge the fact that you might not be interested in their amazing products (I mean, who wouldn't wanna buy a brassiere made out of lama wool or be given an aromatic massage in the middle of a street by a smelly old man). Alon got really good in fighting them off with time... The problem is that due to his automatic response "no gracias!!!", to everyone who talks to him on the street, we had some awkward moments with friendly tourists that just wanted us to take their picture or asked for directions.
Unfortunately we got here at a really bad time... in the middle of a workers strike.
The demonstrators blocked the railway and the roads preventing people from going to the city of Machu Picchu...they even stoped the train to Machu Picchu and made all the tourist come down in the middle of nowhere...

We had to take a bus leaving from Cuzco at 3:00 am(before the demonstrators get up), take a 2.5 hour detour to another town, sleep in the bus until the train stops there at 8:53 am, and then ride the train for another hour and a half... but it was totally worth it...
The city is huge and marvelous...and the mountains around it are really beautiful as well...

The meaning of the name comes from the name of the mountain from which the city discoverers first observed on it. It means "machu- old, picchu- mountain". However, like most tourist, we too didn't quite know how to pronounce the name and gave the locals a few laughs... apparently if you say you want a tour to machu PICHU instead of saying machu PICCHU, you are really asking for a tour in the "old penis".

Today we are taking a bus to Nazca and then home sweet home....
BTW: Loni wants me to remind to whom it may concern, that he wants "shnitzelim" and "avocado & egg salad" when we come home...
see you soon...

Dina & Loni

Bolivia

Hola everybody,
Our experience in Bolivia - the land of the "Cholot" and Hepatitis C, was short but impressionable.
We arrived to La Paz 7 days ago and managed to find a decent hotel with view over the city.

The city is located at the altitude of 4000m, so naturally yours truly got the height sickness and almost suffocated and fainted after walking 10 blocks. La Paz can best be described as a huge flee market with a city built around it. Its a humongous mess that can be quite overwhelming at first - all the sidewalks are jammed by "bastot", the cars are driving at every direction possible and honking the horn like crazy, also, there are no bus stops and people just jump on old beat up vans (on each one there is a little boys who is screaming the direction of the bus). Everything is really really cheap, so we were shopping like crazy. Its the only place one can buy a screwdriver and a yogurt at the same "basta". Alon bought a new fliz at 30 shekels, but sadly we had to throw out his old one due to the lack of space in the mochila (just kidding Uri...your fliz is safe...).

We discovered that our hotel was on the corner of the "witch market" where they sell potions, herbs and all kind of disgusting crap. They are especially fond of dried lama embryos - indeed really grouse. It is supposed to bring luck and they usually bury one at the foundations of 99% of the buildings (we prefer the "mezuza"). I couldn't sleep, thinking about the ghost of the little lama baby haunting our hotel room...scratching the floor and squeaking...Alon found it very amusing and didn't help at all...

We took a bus from La Paz to a small town called Copacabana on the shores of the famous lake "Titikaka" or as we call it "The Kaki lake". Its the highest navigable lake in the world. It is quite big and there are over 30 different islands on it.

We took a boat to the "Isla do Sol"(the island of the sun) where used to be an Inka settlement.
Today there are villages of fisherman, shepherds and farmers. There are many ruins and ancient temples on this island and it is believed by the locals to be the birth place of the Sun God. Although the locals are born as catholics, they still keep practising the ancient ceremonies of their ancestors, among which is the Lama sacrifice.... and they don't name their children until their one year birthday (I guess its easier to ignore them if they have no name...)


Anyhow, we are now in Puno, Peru, at the other side of lake Titikaka, sadly starting the last month of our trip.
tomorrow we will go to Cuzco.
see you soon...

dina & loni

Rio de Janeiro & the CARNAVAL

Hola everyone,
I am writing to you on our last day in Brazil, the land of the tropical fruit and the thong.
The Carnival(or as I call it- the time when all the women with the perfect ass come out from hiding) is now over and I must admit it was a pretty amazing experience.
The carnival itself is a big celebration lasting for 4 days. Its a combination between Purim, Independence day and the gay parade but in much bigger scale....a lot of parties in the middle of the street, band preforming on trucks across the city, everybody is drunk, half naked or dressed in costumes...a lot of drag queens....and drugs....

The main event in Rio is the Samba parade that takes place in the Sambodermo(a huge and long complex designed for about 50,000 spectators). It`s a 4 days competition between the Samba schools(each day 6 groups are competing) and at the end there is the famous champions parade of the six best groups. We were able to get tickets both to the first day(cheep tickets at the far locals sector) and the champions parade(at the second row!!!). The event itself starts at 21:00 and goes on until 6:00 - each group contains about 5000 dancers and marches for about an hour and a half...so its a long night... and we have a lot of photos as you probably can imagine...

Each Samba group chooses a theme to its parade and supposed to tell a story with its costumes and the different constructions. It was really fun at the locals sector because everybody danced and knew the lyrics of the songs and really amazing to sit close at the champions parade. At the end of which some of the dancers threw their costumes to the crowd and we managed to catch quite a few...
if only we had room in the mochila...


A few movies....


Another thing that we did in Rio was going to a football game at the Maracana stadium. Its a huge stadium built to contain up to 200,000 people and it was really really fun (though I have no mean of comparison due to the fact it was my first time at a football game ever).

We were lucky to get tickets to a Derby at the first day of the carnival so it was pretty hectic. It was a match between Botafogo and Vasco. We were seated at the Botafogo sector. The Botafogo is their "Beitar Jerusalem" and its known for its devoted, crazy and sometimes violent fans. After learning the complicated and deep lyrics of the songs (BO-TA-FOOOO-GOOO-GOOO-GOOO!!!!!!) we blended right in...some of us better then the rest... We won 3:2....


So thats it for Brazil...

We have a flight later today to La Paz, Bolivia....
with much hope not to get some stomach disease and return with our appendix still intact...
(just kidding mom)
so keep in touch
and CONGRATULATIONS TO SARIT & ROI!!!!! MAZAL TOV!!!!!

dina & loni