Bolivia oh Bolivia

Seems like a lot has happened since Natalie´s last post, but mostly my time has been consumed with stove trouble-shooting. I´d have to say that I am f***ing burned out. I had to resist the urge multiple times today to launch my stove off the rooftop terrace of our hostal. I have spent pretty much our entire 1.5 days in La Paz jerking around with the stove...getting close enough, often enough, to keep me working. We had hoped to buy a new stove here in La Paz that is meant to burn the dirty auto fuel here (which is what caused the demise of my stove), but the MSR dealer doesn´t actually HAVE any stoves. The only camp stoves available for purchase are cheapies that require disposable fuel canisters, which are also hard to find and expensive. Finally, this afternoon, I talked an eccentric Suiss tour operator into selling me one of his used POS multi-fuel stoves (one that we´d hoped to find new) for $30, but it was so dirty from lack of cleaning that it took me another couple of hours to get that one running decent. Hopefully the used one will limp us along till New Zealand, or at least Santiago, where supposedly it will be easy to get a new MSR stove. Anyway, thats the update with that. I bet you were all on the edges of you seats, yeah?

Soooo, moving along, our day and a half trek on Isla del Sol was well worth sticking around Lake Titikaka for another couple of days. We didn´t arrive on the island until near dark, but were able to trek to about the middle of the island, away from any farms or villages. After making camp among the Eucalyptus trees, we hiked to a nearby knoll to watch the sun set over Peru. On the other side of us, to the east, towards Bolivia, towered the Cordillera Real mountain range, pink in the fading light. Before our water taxi back the next day, we had several hours to explore more ruins in solitude before the wave of tourists arrived.

Bolivia definitely feels like a different country than Peru, even just crossing into Copacabana. I´m feeling a little more comfortable here now, but the most stark and immediate difference I noticed was the women in the markets. One of my favorite parts of Peru was going to the market to buy food because the women were so nice and fun (for the most part). It could have just been Copacabana, but our experience there was that they weren´t even nice or friendly to each other. Oh! We did get ice cream cones for 1 Boliviano (about $0.14) on the bus the other day though! To enjoy this culinary and cultural experience yourself, follow these steps carefully:

1. Go to the store and buy a delicious looking box of waffle cones (the best you can find)
2. At home, scrape all the 5 year old frost out of the inside of your freezer (or your neighbors if yours is frost free.
3. Open the box of waffle cones.
4. Throw the waffle cones in the trash
5. Eat the box with your freshly acquired frost with a flavor you can´t quite place
6. Enjoy!

Tomorrow (hopefully) we start the 3 day Choro trek out of La Paz. Will try to upload pictures soon, but the computers here aren´t too reliable.

Adios,
Sam the stove man