Email Update Number 1! (another update tomorrow after the world´s most dangerous road)

Hello kiddies, Come on you all missed my long rambling emails oui oui? Currently I am in La Paz, Bolivia...the highest capital city in the world! (And me fresh from the worlds highest fresh water lake) but before i update you all on my bumbling adventures in South America a little update on today

Naturally i slept through the tourist bus (if i have to get up for one more thing before dawn i will stab someone in the head with ....with something sharp and stabby!) and jesica told me the only way to get to where i wanted was to ride with the locals.

Actually above and beyond i prefer taking local transportation. Nothing like a toothless peruvian man drooling on your shoulder and a chicken in your lap to lend some credibility to your journey!

So I get to the bus station (have i mentioned how good i have become at sherades?) and manage to wrangle my way on to a bus, hell it was only 5 soles (about 1.50...compared to the tourist bus at 4 times the price! inflation is a bitch). First there is a lovely troubador serenading us with local music, then some strange man who seems to think hes the spanish version of tom cruise in top gun....I couldn´t quite make out what he was talking about. First I thought it was all about politics, but with the wild gesticulation i caught the word obesity. Maybe not politics? Next he was holding two different oranges thrusting them in our faces.....calling out SENORA SENORS! Rise to the power of ....fruit? I think it must have had something to do with plants because he gave me some seeds as a present. Note to self: LEARN SPANISH

  Next we arrived in Desguardo a sleepy little Peruvian town whose only use is being a border crossing. I, naturally, had lost my immagracion card so there was a big hubub about paying fines, going to immigracion, going to the police, back to immigracion (i´m spelling it as the spanish do okay?) some tears. okay fine across. First I tried to climb on a communal bus filled with men (naturally i was attracted) on the bolivian side and i was shoved off! It seems men travel with men and women with women in the communal buses. Whatever. So everything is fine and smooth until we get to la paz....the women are gesticulating wildly and babbling in spanish, and naturally i think they are telling me how pretty i am. Turns out they were trying to warn me of the danger of the neighborhood we were being dropped in. The finger across the throat should have given me a hint but NONO of course i´m oblivious.

  So there I am carovating by flipflop through the most dangerous neighborhood in Bolivia taking pictures with my expensive camera.....thinking the tourist district is a WEE bit more decrepit then i had pictured it when a man comes up gesticulating wildly once more...naturally i ALSO think he is telling me how pretty i am. Turned out what was in his pocket was a gun, not an erection (though i´m sure he was happy to see me!) He only got 20 dollars and inexplicably my rough guide to bolivia....Now convinced of the danger of lapaz as the sun is setting i flag a cab to the nearest hotel...which turns out to be 5 stars and a LOT more money then i have (290 dollars a night to be exact!) So, what is my solution? I fall back upon what woman kind has relied on since the dawn of time.

  I cried.   And i cried and i cried and i cried. And threw in some wild gesticulations as well for good measure. (hey i learned SOMETHING from my robbery). They gave me the room for 40 canadian. YAY ME. Also, this hotel has complimentary drinks. I don´t think they will be complimentary anymore when i am done with them!

  That was today´s little adventure, now for more of a trip summary:   My flight over was rather uneventful, though i did join the mile high club AGAIN. Go me! (It was a peruvian man at that, sampling the culture before i´m even there? SCORE!) and found my way to my lovely hotel in the MiraFlores district of Peru. The first few days were spent sightseeing museums and ruins around Lima (though being full of myself and an archaeologist i had to correct every single one of my guides on the archaeological aspects of the preinca cultures. God, i´d so hate me if i weren´t so fabulous)

  OH and then there was the unfortunate incident where i decided it would be fun to try and learn how to surf. I had read about Lima being a world capital for surfing (incidentally it is as well for handgliding which if i werent planning to do in Rio DiJeneiro oh however the frack you spell it in Brazil i would have done here) and naturally decided i would, well, be a natural. Turns out my coordination has not improved since kindergarten. SEVERELY hungover me and Jose (are they ALL named Jose in peru???) took to the waves and i ended up with not one but two black eyes. (From having somehow landed eye first into the sharp part of the surfboard) and a cackling instructor. Did I mention he had a hip flask of johnny walker on him the entire time he was ´teaching´me?

   AnyHOO, day 3 circa 2 am. I have suddenly come down with a horrible fever and gastroentitis (vomiting and diarrea for those of you not in the medical industry. HI MOM. also yes i am aware i misspelled the D. word. The vodka and coke are going STRAIGHT to my head) i pack my stuff up, shaking so badly i can hardly walk and my vision is going (note: i did not drink anything the night before, this was a REAL sickness!) stumble down to the front desk and inform them i won´t be making it. i mean my god, a 6 am flight to cusco and they want me there at 3 am?!?!?!?

  my reaction as expressed in keystrokes !"·$UI·$% &/()=)((/!"·$% &/()!"·$% &/()   Sometime during the night my fever broke and I realized if i didn´t make it to Cusco that evening I wouldn´t be able to hike the Inca trail (you have to book this shit between 3 months to a YEAR In advance depending on the tourist season) glum and sipping my coffee i perused LANperu flights...what´s this? EUREKA an afternoon flight to cusco for 100 dollars! okay so i wasted the 55 dollars of my earlier flight and paid a premium but WHATEVER!)

  unfortunately i forgot to change out of  my neon green elephant covered pyjamas before i headed to the airport. You want strange looks? Sit it the domestic terminal of the lima airport braless wearing a skimpy tanktop reading 'i'm unforgettable' with neon green pyjama bottoms covered in elephants drinking local beer and reading Kurt Vonnegut. The airconditioning made my nipples erect as well. Quel suprise!

  Finally arrive in Cusco, one of the most beautiful cities i have ever had the pleasure to visit. Cusco is a dream wrapped in mist, this stunning city in the heart of the Andes filled with colonial architecture thick clouds, stunning views....Cusco is what dreams were made to be realized as. Paradise in the Andes. As most of you know I have seen the world, but this, this place touched something deep and intrinsic in me. Something primal, that is how great the beauty of the city is.

  Details aside the next day I headed out on the inca trail. Accompanying me were Sarah and her Dad (an unfortunate incident occured when i thought they were lovers not father and daughter but we will leave it at that), a beautiful uruguayian man (incidentally he was the only one to succesfully fuck a girl in the ruins, i coined the term he INCAED her!), Sammy a passionate if too skinny argentinian, and a dull german couple.

  I have trekked and i have trekked HARD. The Inca trail fell somewher ein the middle. Naturally i paid the extra money for porters to carry my stuff (aside from my personal stuff that is....the giant box of condoms must have weighed at least 20 kilos!). On Day 1 unfortunately my spanish betrayed me. I confused ´hambres´(hungry) and ´hombres´ (men). I was of course confused as to why everyone was in hysterics as i shouted en espanol both i AM a man and i LOVE men. Oh Spanish you dirty lover.

   The hike was incredible. The biodiversity of the environments we passed through....there are no words. The trail is limited to 500 people at a time and while this may seem a lot a) it is a 4 day hike b) this includes both porters and guides and  cooks as WELL as tourists, the ration of actual farang (the spanish word for foreigner) is about 2:3 .....Imagine waking up to vistas of mountains over half the height of everest, of wild llamas coming to steal your food, of archaeological after archaeological site appearing out of the mist....green and wet.....those were the sensations of this trip. Of course we were up between 4 and 6 am every day and we climbed thousands of metres and descended them again. Several people had to be carried out due to altitude sickness. But still, especially day 3 of the hike...never in my life have i lived a dream so purely. Those of you on facebook can see a fraction of the pictures. if you´re not, join. seriously, i am that fabulous and they are that pretty.

  What more? Ah yes , hot married guy. Didn´t know he was married initially. He looked to be around 28 turns out he was 36, married with a one year old child. HImself, me, His good aussie buddy paul and my english friend Sarah spent most of the post machu picchu day drinking pisco sours in the hot tubs of augus calientes. Eventually it became train time. Did i mention it was his birthday? Figuring blowjobs weren´t cheating i serviced him in the washroom. Unfortunately (well i would say fortunately, my morals disagree) later that night we sealed the deal.several times. Oh SHAME

  HMG flew out that morning. He left me a sweet note. I crumbled it up in the garbage i later threw up in. What a romantic I am!

   From Cusco I moved on to Puno, the city on the border of Bolivia with Lake Tititcaca, the highest freshwater lake in the world. Spent an AMAZING day visiting Uros 0 the floating islands. These people were impossible to conquer by the incas because they stayed in the middle of this huge lake (think great lakes big). They MAKE these islands out of a certain reed, and they constantly refresh the top as the bottom is decayed by both predators and bacteria. Fascinating lifestyle.

  From there visited a few more of the more famous islands (my favourite being taquille, where the leaders have rainbow hats, single men have white and red and married have all red....there was too much of a lacking of white and red for me)

  and now we reloop. I am going to try and ride the most dangerous road in the world tomorrow via bicycle (300 plus people died this year alone!) but my robbery and subsequent arrival and sobbing at the 5 star plus may curtail that. We shall see

  Email me now bitches. Or no postcards for you (though to be fair i discovered 20 postcards today postmarked and written and stamped with my signature chicken scratch that i forgot to mail from peru. so it may be a while before you get them)

  ALSO remember my blog!!!!!!! http://realtravel.com /member-m3703657-allie_s _adventures.htmlAnd photos are on facebook. If you´re not on facebook, join now. Le mwah! Indiana Allie