Peru update 2

Hello again, I´m now in La Paz, Bolivia. I´ve been told that this is the cheapest country in South America and I believe it. Our hostel is a bit pricey at $4 per night and our daily food costs are running around $5 (for restaurants, 3 meals a day).
Since the last update, we've gone to Puno on the shore of Lake Titicaca and visited the famous Los Uros islands made entirely of reeds, where people live in reed houses and even eat the reeds. This lake is the highest navigable lake in the world at 3800m we the air is noticeable thinner. Then we traveled around Lake Titicaca into Bolivia where we had a very interesting border crossing and took a $1 bus ride to the ancient city of Tiwanaku to see the ruins. Then we took another $1 ride to La Paz.
Tomorrow we bicycle down 4000m vertical meters on the worlds most dangerous road (dont worry it´s safer on a bike than in a car), on our way to the jungle of Rurrenbaque for a 5 day adventure.
Click the thumbnail above for the entire Peru gallery.
Ciao

Peru update

we arrived in lima and left as soon as possible because there's nothing really to see in lima, and lots of people get mugged. a german we met said that a shady character walked up beside him and started saying something about a pistol, and "bang bang", but he ignored the guy and walked towards a crowd of people. an israeli told us that the taxi in front of his was stopped by two people, they made the driver open the trunk, and they ran off down the street with their backpacks.

we have seen too much already to discuss in detail, so i´ll summarize - we saw a national park with beautiful sandstone cliffs, a volcanic island home to an unbelievable number of birds - their guano is harvested from the island for fertilizer and brings in many dollars for peru, we sandboarded and dune buggied on enormous sand dunes, got to see the difference between public and private hospitals when jordan passed out from sickness and dehydration and landed face first on a ceramic floor, and recently returned from a 3 day hike in the Colca Canyon which in many places is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. At the colca canyon we saw giant condors with 12` wingspans gliding on thermals, sometimes buzzing only a few feet over your head. And we still have over 2 weeks left.

the accomodations and food are cheap ($10/day total) and the people are friendly. transportation is also cheap - but the country really gets you when it comes to entry fees into major sites. (although admittedly these fees arent very high, just in relation to all other things).

i dont know when i'll be able to put out another update, but check out a small sampling of photos from so far by clicking the thumbnail above

now we're moving on to lake titicaca and then to bolivia before coming back for machu picchu and cuzco. i'll try to upload more photos later.

ciao amigos