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