6/26/2011: Copacabana to Tarija
I slept straight through the night for the first time.
I was thinking that when I was putting on my sun screen, I felt like a Maori warrior, putting on war paint. It was sort of thick and white, and it only gradually faded into colorlessness. Similarly, it was to become my daily ritual before going out to face my nemesis—the sun.
As we left Copacabana, I saw a small church nestled in a small churchyard. The interesting aspect was that almost the entire churchyard surrounding the church was a graveyard! I guess the church didn’t have much land, and so they had to put the graves wherever there was space.
Near the ferry, we stopped for a bathroom break. When we finished our business and returned to the street, the bus was gone! Then we walked around the corner and found that we were basically at the ferry landing. The bus was already being loaded onto its boat/barge. As a result, however, I didn’t have my camera. So I couldn’t get a picture of a person in a Donald Duck suit at the entrance to the dock.
In one small town we saw a parade going down the main road.
We had to stop and let them pass. We thought it was for a religious holiday,
maybe Saint Peter, but we’re not sure. Since we were stopped, a number of us
got out and took
pictures of the parade
from
different angles.
Later on we ran
across a smaller parade, but we were able to pass them slowly, so we didn’t
need to stop and wait for them.
Then we stopped at the house of a reed boat builder on the
shore of Titicaca. He was the designer for (I think) the Ra II for Thor
Heyerdahl and several other similar boats. He was
77 years old,
and he was
going to Norway in August to
consult on another boat.
We dropped Teo (the cultural guide) off then turned off onto
a dirt road into the trail head. We had to drive really slowly through some
stream beds that had washed out parts of the road. We probably
drove for an hour or so,
passing small “villages” and herds of animals on the way to the
trail head. We didn’t hike up the road because we were late due to spending too
much time with the boat builder and perhaps due to the parade.
At the end of the road, we had lunch and shuffled stuff into
the duffles. Then we hiked up to base camp. During the hike, I just wore my two
tee shirts. The hike in was wonderful. We were camped on a little flat area
next to a lake, surrounded by several
snow capped peaks
that reminded me of the
Cascades, except that we were already higher than Rainier. I wrote: So far
things here look great. At the same time it is not at all like I imagined, and
it is better than I hoped.
Similar to the previous accommodations, Chris and I both got our own 2-person tent, and everyone else was paired up into 3-person tents.
When I was unpacking, I got good news and bad news. I *had* packed my parka (I was later wearing it as I wrote my diary). The bad news was that I hadn’t packed my rain pants. It was the rain pants that I had remembered putting into the bag to stay behind.
Due to the late start at the trail head, dinner was late.
After dinner, as I finished writing up my diary, I found that I was having trouble trying to keep my pen from apparently freezing (or at least getting too cold to write). I found that I had to keep it inside my down jacket when I wasn’t writing with it, so that it would be warm enough to work. I came to the realization (not for the first time, and probably not for the last) that camping in below-freezing temperatures is not my favorite.
I ended the day’s diary entry with:
So far, I really enjoyed today. I’m warm enough now, and I was fine in the hike in. The stars are wonderful out, although I don’t think I can get a picture. So my only concerns are the lack of rain pants and the ridge of Huayna.