I love coffee.  I used to drink coffee to keep me awake during 24-hour halibut fishing openers in Kodiak.  I has a skipper on my crab boat that brought a 50lb bag of Espresso beans on the boat and would make the crew freshly ground super strong coffee BEFORE he woke us up every day.  I really came to love coffee shortly after I met Michelle.  I was at her cabin on Goldhill Road one night and she made me coffee with vanilla ice cream in it.  It changed my life.

I prefer my coffee in a large cup with a teaspoon and a half of sugar and Coffeemate (TM).  Many people have suggested cream or half and half to me, like I’m missing out on something.  I have to say here that Coffeemate (TM), for me, adds a wonderfully delicious flavor to my sweetened coffee that I totally enjoy.  No other non-dairy creamer adds the same flavor as Coffeemate (TM), nor does cream, etc.  Just to be clear.

Michelle and I have been drinking hazelnut coffee for as long as I can remember.  It used to be that the only place in Fairbanks you could get it was at Country Kitchen, but as the coffee movement in the USA grew, it became more widely available.  At some point we switched from fresh ground coffee to Folgers hazelnut coffee.  With six kids, you do what you can to save money.

Coffee availability in SA was a big concern for us.  Mary and Brian had been to Ecuador not too long before we were heading there and told us there was no good coffee in Ecuador.  This was pretty horrifying   What about the rest of SA?  We were going to Colombia so thing should be pretty good, right?  Just in case, we stocked up on Folgers in Florida before we shipped the camper over.  I think we had like 8 cans of coffee.  We also had a giant can of Coffeemate (TM).

In Colombia it turns out that most of the coffee there is for export.  When I was picking up the van and trailer from the port I was in a warehouse filled with coffee.  And I mean filled. One hundred pound burlap sacks stacked on pallets and then stacked on top of each other something like 40 feet high.  It was all unroasted coffee beans.  It reminded me of the warehouse they stuck the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  It was an unbelievable amount of coffee.  Inconceivable really.

As we drove south all too quickly through Colombia we came to the city of Caucasia. We saw our first supermarket in SA and screeched to a halt on the side of the road to head in.  We stocked up on many groceries, but one of the things we bought was a 5 kilo bag of ground coffee.  It was something like $35.  It turns out we should have bought more.

Our giant bag of coffee was pretty good stuff.  I have to say, Colombian coffee is really good.  We didn’t have any coffee worries at all through Ecuador.  We didn’t run out until our lengthy stay in Puno.  At the supermarket in Puno (Plaza Vea) they sold some coffee that turned out to be tolerable.  Altiplano was the brand.  It was pretty expensive, at least compared to the prices of other things in Peru, which were generally pretty cheap.  It was about $7 a pound.  One night we stopped into a smaller market that had coffee for sale in plastic bags.  It smelled pretty good so we bought it.  It was $5 for two pounds.  It was terrible and still sits in the cupboard to this day.

We has a lot of hopes for Chile after spending two months in Peru.  Good coffee was one of them.  Oh well.  So far we have tried four or five different brands of coffee in Chile.  They were all OK, but Chile itself is pretty expensive and coffee is no exception.  It runs $10 a pound for cheaper stuff (Haiti brand or Colombia brand) but quality coffee is way up there. Juan Valdez brand (REALLY!) from Colombia is $20 a pound.  We have not bought it.

We have quite a bit of our Folgers hazelnut coffee left, but it turns out that we are not liking it so much.  We ran out of Coffeemate (TM) a long, long time ago and it seems hazelnut Folgers is not the same without it.  Especially black.  Many of you who have been to our house may already have known this.  We did not, since we had been adding stuff to our coffee.  I don’t know what this means for us when we get home.  Will we continue to drink strictly Folgers hazelnut?  I don’t think so.  I am looking forward to moving back to fresh ground coffees of many varieties .  I am hoping to have a few or several different types of coffee on hand for whatever mood suites me.  But first I must talk about an unforeseen development.  NESCAFE!

The coffee aisles in supermarkets (or any market that has coffee) are filled with instant coffee.  Seriously.  There is something like 3 feet of shelf space for ground North American style coffee and then 25 feet of instant stuff.  Ryan had brought some Nescafe from the US with us and we (Michelle and I) decided to try it.  It turned out to be not so bad.  Really.  We followed the directions exactly to see what it would be like and it was pretty good!  Best of all, it was really easy to make.  Just heat up some water and pour it over the instant coffee in a cup.  No need to get out the generator and the coffee maker, find the filters, measure out X amount of coffee, make sure we have enough water (always an issue in SA since any water we consume, we buy), etc.  Most importantly, since we have all moved to black coffee (except for Ryan, who was already there), it tasted good.  And we can make it quickly anytime anywhere, which can be pretty important when you’re traveling like we are.

Now I’m not saying we are switching to instant coffee on a permanent basis.  I don’t really know what this means.  I am still looking forward to stocking up on coffee as I mentioned earlier in this post.  I am curious to see what happens when we get back.  I can certainly see the advantages instant coffee can present when you need coffee pretty bad.

One thing I know, I sure do miss good coffee.

March 13 was the scheduled departure from Puno.

The night before, we had a sad goodbye with the Grifo folks.  Ryan helped them with an English lesson CD on their computer for awhile and we looked through our hard drive of music and listened to Whitney Houston and Madonna (their choice).

We woke up early, secured the camper for travel and ventured into town one last time to pick up some last minute supplies – also Annabelle, Sylvia and Max wanted to climb to the top of the Mirador.  The Mirador sits on a hill above Puno, a 1,027 foot ascent up steep streets to a staircase of 622 steps.  Half of us had already climbed so Mark took the kids while Jack, Ryan and I ran to the mercado.  Jennah stayed in the camper.  The plan was to meet up at noon and have lunch and then leave for Chile.

We split up and Ryan, Jack & I headed for Scotia Bank (yes, there is a Canadian bank here) to withdraw money.  When we got to the ATM, I didn’t have the card.  I have the only card as Mark lost his wallet at the gas station with the sodium cyanide trucks.  I guard the ATM card – where could it be?  I think you all know the answer this already.  We began the ascent of the Mirador but I was certain Mark didn’t have the card, we had stopped to buy something on the way into town and he didn’t seem to have the card.  We texted Jennah but she couldn’t find the card so we grabbed a taxi and returned to the camper where the card was not found.  We hopped a combi and returned to wait for Mark.

And guess what.  Mark had the card.

We still had shopping to do and lunch so we decided to just postpone leaving.  Because we like Puno.  We spent a wonderful last day shopping and talking with Puno friends.  Ryan and Jack got interviewed and video taped by a team of high school students who had a project for their English class.

School here is all boys or all girls and everyone wears a uniform.  Sylvia LOVES the uniforms.  She asked me if there were any schools in Fairbanks she could go to wear she could wear a uniform – and I said home school requires a uniform!  So she is most excited to buy one, they sell them everywhere.  There were some things I wanted to buy anyway.  They sell these things I would call knitted sock tights.  They are thickly knitted footless tights and they are $2.40 USD a pair so I bought Sylvia two more pairs.  So warm for winter!  Annie didn’t think they were very stylish.  Ryan got his hair cut ($1.60 USD) and the daily lightning and thunderstorm rolled over the lake so we headed to the van to wait out the rain (we hardly ever drive the van, we usually take a combi but we had a lot of groceries to buy so we left Trek inside to guard the van).  We got to the van, hung out with Trek, dropped off our bags and waited out the storm.  Once it passed, we headed to the music store so Jack could buy a mamaquena.  He has been wanting one since before we arrived.

Jack, Jennah and Ryan headed to dinner and the rest of us went to the mercado.  We had to do the last vegetable and fruit shopping trip.  We returned to the van to drop off the bags and the mamaquena before heading to Plaza Vea, the hyper mercado, for water.

Mark went to open the back of the van but the lock had been smashed in!  The door was unlocked!  We do not keep the generator in the car but all of Mark’s tools are there and I left my smartphone in the car because of the rain.  It appears that someone tried to break in and then Trek kept them out.  We gave Trek a lot of love and praise! Mark decided to run to Plaza Vea while we stayed in the van as the back door no longer locked.  Its a quick trip, we were a block away.  Max, Annie, Sylvie and I were sitting in the car when the bad guy returned!  Outside there is very loud music playing all the time (at this time, it was Jump!) so he must not have even thought to look for people in the car.  Trek growled and I looked toward the back and the guy was trying to open the back door!  I told the kids to STAY THERE and jumped out of the van with my keys in attack mode but the door opening made the guy run away faster than I could catch him – and really what would I have done if I had caught him?  It was very exciting.

Mark returned with water and there were 4 excited different versions of the story.  We returned to the grifo where the folks there were incredulous that this had happened to us twice!  In the morning, Mark took the smashed lock out and headed to a shop where they are repairing it so we will be able to lock the door.  We are waiting for his return to leave Puno.  The Grifo folks came and got Ryan to fix their printer and then wanted him to go to  Sillustani to pick avocados in the avocado field but its a 3 hour trip so he stayed here.  Or else we would never leave Puno.

Like everything else in Peru, the lock was carefully saved and rebuilt where in America it would have been thrown away and a new one ordered.  It cost $18 to rebuild the lock.  While the lock was being rebuilt, Jack & Ryan hopped a combi into town to pick up a few guinea pigs as farewell presents for the Grifo family and some seeds for the garden in Alaska.

We are heading to the Atacama having decided to skip Bolivia.  24 days on the shores of Lake Titicaca has been enough like Bolivia that we decided we didn’t want the hassle right now.  We may change our mind later but at this time, begging for gas sounds pretty awful.  Bolivia is even poorer than Peru and that is hard, too.  Other overlanders have told us that we should bring rice to give people as gifts.  Also it is the rainy season and the salt flats are muddy.  Bolivia is officially on hold.

We said another goodbye to the Grifo people.

Mother and Father heard a cover of Dust in the Wind by Kansas played on the pan flute when they went out.  Of course this led to the purchasing of two CDs full of Andean classic rock.

I think I’ve already talked about this but here in Puno there’s a hotel that’s a tower. I don’t know for sure but I’m pretty sure this hotel is the tallest building in Puno. At the top there’s a restaurant and on top of that there’s a bar with windows for you to look through. We’ve been trying to go to this bar for three days now but every night it’s been closed due to the lameness of the bar tender. Maybe tonight it’ll be open. The other night Mom, Jennah, Ryan, and I went out for pizza at the restaurant called Macchu Pizza. This restaurant was kind of really slow but that was okay because their chairs were comfortable. The pizza itself was mostly cheese and very little pizza but I still enjoyed it. I bought a CD with one gigabyte of Samba music on it. My South American music folder is pretty full now.

There’s this alcoholic beverage sold down here called the Pisco Sour. I’ve never had it of course but it’s made from egg whites, a wine called pisco, salt, and other nasty things. I think it’s funny because it’s really, really, nasty sounding. Egg whites don’t taste good. I bought a cup of white foam covered in cinnamon that looked really scrumptious but then it turned out to be egg white and made my hands really sticky. After spreading the egg whites on a few people on accident I found a trash can. While my egg white problem was happening, Ryan bought himself a giant, llama-less blanket and I found a cool pen. When I was younger I used to collect pens but I’ve out grown that now. I had a ton of pens. It was really cool. Everyone would come over just to look at my pens but I lost all of them somehow.

The witches here don’t let people photograph there llama feti so I haven’t been able to get any photos of those, sorry. Not much is happening. We’re still waiting for the phone; still buying hats.
Good bye.

The floating islands were cool, though they smelled bad. I think that the reeds under were rotting.  We walked around the reed desert and looked at what they sold.  I wandered away from the rest of my kin and was promptly called back in. One of the local persons forced a local wear on me, which wasn’t very flattering. We then took a reed boat to the other island. I rowed for a few moments, as did Jack, but then the original rowers took over, since we were being too slow. Jack started talking to some guy he thought was Ryan, but then it turned out to be some British guy.

One day in Puno, Ryan, Jack and I walked to the top of a mountainous hill.  It started off as a gentle slope, then escalated to a very, very steep road then ended as stairs up the hill. At the top was viewpoint with a giant condor on the top. Ryan took pictures of Puno and I had to take pictures of him. We headed back down.

The other night Mother, Jack, Ryan and I went out. We went to the witch market, which sold llama fetuses. Jack tried to take a picture of them but the lady tending the booth started to yell at him. Mother and Ryan looked at blankets and I wandered off to look at red pea coats. The market was separate into ,rows and you couldn’t go to the next one unless you went all the way to the end. There was, however, a space to cross over which I did. When I was finished looking to coats I realized my bridge had closed. I was stranded.
I went all the way around to get back. Whilst I was preoccupied Jack had unwisely bought something from a cart. It was in a clear plastic cup and topped with cinnamon. It resembled banana pudding.  He, at first, said it was really good and I refused to taste it. He then said it was ‘the foulest things his taste buds had ever touched’ so of course I had to try it. I didn’t think it was that bad, but he kept calling it sludge and abandoned it on the side of the road.  We walked up to the fanciest hotel that had a bar on the top. It had windows so you could look  over Lake Titicaca. Unfortunately, it was closed, so instead we went to Macchu Pizza (haha) to eat. The pizza took forty-five minutes and was greasy, but still good. Mother ordered a pitcher of sangria, which tasted okay and had little apple slices floating on the top. We finished and walked around a couple of moments before going back.

Jennah

Two weeks in Puno, Peru and it seems like we live here.  We are camped at a very nice grifo station on the south end of town (Salsado) on the shore of Lake Titicaca, which is actually  marshy and not the kind of shore you can stroll along.  There are sheep at the grifo station and we are tucked into a back corner, safe and secure.  A family lives here and they have been, as everyone we have met so far, most kind and helpful.  They have a daughter who is learning English and she works at a hotel here in Puno.  She helped us get much needed laundry done and arranged a tour for us of  Uros, the Floating Islands.

Laundry cost almost $100 USD.  We had a lot of laundry but still that seemed like a lot. Laundry here is dropped off dirty and they charge by the kilo and return it pressed and folded.  We were having some trouble washing laundry well by hand.  I never learned really how to wash laundry well by hand, not whole loads of laundry.  A quick google search and some chatting with people who always wash laundry by hand and Team DeCorso has hand washing laundry down!  Here is how we do it:

Water and detergent dissolved  in a 5 gallon bucket.  Add clothes (not too many).  Let them soak for 30 minutes.  We bought a new  toilet plunger and use it to agitate the laundry for 15 minutes.  Then we remove the laundry and let it drain for 15 minutes.  Next we use three buckets of rinse water and some plunger action to rinse and hang it out to dry.

We have had several exciting things happen since we have been in Puno:

• School stuff
• Cell phone stuff
• Hospital stuff
• Roof rack creation
• Hats!

School Stuff:  We were getting worried about the accuracy of our shipping quote back to the states.  The time seemed to fluctuate between five days and 21 days and 4 kids need to be back in Alaska for standardized testing.  If the shipping is 21 days and there was a storm or a political problem, we might not make it back in time.  If it was the original 5 days, all would be fine.  We decided to unenroll 4 kids from school.  What this did was open up a world of possibilities and some flexibility in getting back.  We are now free to ship out of a better location a week later if we so desire.  We have not made any changes at this time and are still planning on shipping out of Lima.  But we COULD change our minds now and that adds some excitement!

Cell Phone Stuff:  We bought a smartphone in Fairbanks and had it shipped here (THANK YOU MARY!!) and, even though that took less than 2 days, the phone is still in customs hold.  And we are in Puno for at least another few days.  The customs process makes no sense; it costs no fees and everyone is earnest and sincere – and it still makes no sense.  Our used cell phone is being held in Lima until we fill out a form (which the Ministry did for us), mail it to Lima (which the Ministry did for us and paid for express mail for us while walking us 7 blocks to the mailing place), Lima generates a letter and sends it to us and we send it back to DHL in Lima.  On Monday, we are going to try to have the letter sent directly to DHL.  Probably won’t work.  No one seems to know why we need to do this.  Once the letter gets to DHL in Lima, they will ship the phone and we will leave Puno.

Hospital Stuff:  Max got bit by a dog.  A stray dog was sleeping under the van and Max opened the door and the dog bit him on the leg, a bloody bite that took out chunks of skin.  The bite was not very bad, it looked like it might have taken a few stitches maybe but there was the possibility of rabies.   Mark & Ryan took him to the hospital (imagine flies and a lot of people) and returned with a Puno Official who came to find the dog to see if it had a rabies shot – which was practically impossible.  There are stray dogs everywhere here.  Many live at the trash piles and they are not nice like Ecuadorean dogs; they are snarly and mean and everyone is afraid of them.  Ryan and I feed the nicer  stray dogs because sometimes we just feel so bad for them.  It seemed like Max was heading back to the Hospital for a full compliment of rabies vaccinations.  He didn’t know what that meant and he was in his usually good spirits telling me that he wouldn’t mind a shot, making me nearly cry.   But! (and this is a miracle) the dog had a rabies tag!  Everyone was shocked and surprised, no one expected the dog to have a rabies shot!  Max got a prescription for antibiotics and his leg healed up well. Total cost for dog bite:  $8 USD.

A Custom Roof Rack has been a dream of Mark’s.  And now we actually need one.  We need to carry 25 gallons of deisel as we travel the southwest circuit of Bolivia and then we need one to put things on the roof when we head back because we have decided that we are selling the camper in South America.  So for a few days, the van has to hold everything.  Peru is a great place to get this done as there are guys with welding stuff and recycled stuff and metal and such everywhere.

Hats: the hat project has become the #1 activity in Puno.  Ryan has a list of requests and items and we venture out every day to buy some hats.  It is more challenging than you might think as some of the people most desperate for money have kind of bad hats.  We buy some bad hats but mostly we buy great hats for about $4 usd each.  I know Ryan has a lengthy blog post he is writing about this but I wanted to give a short update.  Ryan has been kind of busy this week as the colleges he has applied to all come out with their official scholarship offers and he has had a lot of forms and such to fill out.  The hat project is going very well.

Stuck in Puno

Frommer’s says Puno is not worth spending an entire day in.  Frommer’s also says that Puno is “bleak, unimpressive and often brutally cold and not one of Peru’s most interesting or attractive cities” and “a mostly unlovely city”.  Team DeCorso however, LOVES Puno.  Brutally cold? Are you kidding?  We have to wear a fleece jacket at night.  Bleak?  Puno is full of activity, every single night and lovely parks, playgrounds, music, parades, singing, dancing and wood-fired pizza all on the shore of Lake Titicaca.  We could not have picked a better place to be stuck waiting for the phone.  The cost of living is quite cheap here, allowing us to live like the fabled 1%.  A large wood-fired pizza in candlelit restaurant is $8 USD.  On Saturdays, the market is the biggest we have encountered in South America.  Frommer’s says the market is “seedy”, “unattractive” and “a realistic look at the underbelly of the Peruvian economy”.  WTF Frommer’s?   We have found the market to be amazing.  Everything is for sale here from dishware to tradtional Cholita dresses, llama fetuses, witchcraft, perfume, knock off North Face jackets, yarn, fabric, used Happy meal toys…  We spent two wonderful Saturdays dodging the many marching bands (why so many marching bands we cannot know) and meandering the market.  For 1 sole (forty cents in the USA) I can buy a ring, a small skein of yarn, a jar of buttons, a saltena (deep fried bread stuffed with potatoes, olives, egg and chicken), 10 pairs of shoe laces, two hair scrunchies, a tin cup, a small bag of good luck potion, a 3D religious poster, a salsa CD with 168 songs on it or five spoons.  I am often shocked at the low prices and cannot bargain down at all.  I bought Sylvia a waldorf style knitted doll made from alpaca and stuffed with wool from the Women’s Cooperative and it was $2.80 USD.

People here are so much more efficient than we are used to.  We always pride ourselves on recycling and reusing items but it does not hold a candle to Peru.  So many things I would have (and have) thrown away are rebuilt, reused, fixed and sold.  Many things I think of as disposable are not that way here.  Ryan has a pair of LLBean hiking boots we bought him last summer.  He is hard on shoes and they have fallen apart.  A hole, a rip, a torn off lace holder, no tread.  He took them to the mercado and for 7 soles ($4.80), they sewed the holes, replaced the tread, fixed the lace holder and put new insteps into each shoe.  They are better than new.

About half of the people here wear traditional dress and that traditional dress is really amazing because it is complicated and heavy.  Women here traditionally wear layers (and layers and layers and layers).  Several skirts under a felt skirt, several shirts under a blouse, all topped with a fabulous apron smock, then shawls and blankets, socks, stockings and leg warmers, wrist warmers, fingerless gloves and mittens, knit hats under tiny bowler hats, scarves and heavy hair jewelry – beads and pompoms woven into braids.  Often carrying a similarly dressed small child wrapped in a blanket like a sling.  Makes me nearly pass out just watching as even standing up at 12,080 feet can make you dizzy – I cannot imagine wearing so many heavy things and then carting a baby and potatoes around!  The market has shops that sell each specific layer.  I loved the apron smock thing.  I bought one for myself, one for Sylvia and one for Shana.

We spent a day on Uros, the Floating Islands where we ate grass (the banana of the Uros), bought a little reed boat for Sylvia’s dolls, and had an enjoyable sunny day on Lake Titicaca.  The islands are 2m thick.  They harvest 1m chunks of reed roots now in the rainy season to form the floating base and then cover them with 1m of reeds.  The islands are spongy to walk on.  They have a school, a Seventh Day Adventist Church, several restaurants and homes, although made of reeds, have solar panels and internet.

Most of the time, we wander around town.  We have made friends (the owners of the vegan restaurant, the Uruguayan man who works at the coffee shop, the woman at the IPeru office who has been helping us with the phone…).  We eat out more here, food is almost as cheap to eat out as it is to cook.  We had Chifa (Peruvian Chinese, very common) which is rice stir-fried with cut up hot dogs three ways: 1.  with french fries 2. with pasta 3. with pasta and french fries (the Triple).  One of our favorite places is the Salchipaparia (salchipapas are french fries with cut up hot dogs) where you can get a plate or a cone of salchipapas.  For some reason in Peru, they filet the hotdogs to look like squids.  It’s kind of unappealing.  More or less, the food here is starchy and bland.  Rice, pasta, and french fries are the basis of all meals.  Meat, except chicken, is unknown – llama, alpaca, cuy, pork, beef?

We play a game here called the Peruvian Lucky Food game – who gets the hair?  We sometimes have multiple winners at any meal out.  We have never once had food in Peru where no one got a hair, except at the excellent vegan restaurant.

Otherwise it has been very relaxing and fun.  We found clay for sale here and Sylvia has been playing with clay for the last two weeks.  It doesn’t harden (its paraffin based) but it does eventually turn all one color – grey.  The kids rediscovered Boggle and we have been playing every day.  They keep on their music lessons so there is always music being played, the piano keyboard but also the mandolin, pan flute, ocarina, bag pipe chanter,  charango, charangón, ronroco, hualaycho, zampoña, quena, bombo, huancara, reco reco, chiapya box, pinquillo, tarka, toyos, pututu and Andean saxophone – another reason why we need the roof rack.

Puno, Peru

Posted on February 24, 2013
I wrote this a few days back but posted the hat post instead. First of all, the tremendous amount of support was really unexpected–I truthfully didn’t know that people even read my blog until then. I’m starting to wonder if there’s a enough hats and materials in Puno to cope with the sudden demand. I bought a hat and pair of gloves yesterday, and I’m going to look for someone in town to buy the first real set of hats from today. I’ll get around to replying to everyone individually soon, we are all sharing one internet connection that’s fairl slow and unreliable.

Now, here’s the post about Puno from three days ago:

I’m going to try a different strategy, one where I write ten page to page-and-a-half blog posts instead of one ten page droning wall of text.

Day three in Puno, Peru. There’s still lightning, and the weather is perfect—40-50F at night, and low to mid 60s during the day alternating with light rain and sunlight. There’s five sheep outside the door in the corner of the bricked-in gas station. They live under a derelict 1960s pickup with a few pieces of once-galvanized steel leaned against the right side to keep out the rain, and during the day someone takes them to graze in a vacant lot between a pharmacy and an apartment building along the highway into the city.

I have to watch for frogs when I take my dog out for walks. They’re about two and a half to three inches in length, and are also probably toads and not frogs (I haven’t wanted to touch one to figure out, plus I’m not entirely sure they’re unvenomous). The amphibians are also incredibly slow and can’t move more than a few feet a minute, even when my dog’s trying to eat them.

Today, we went into town to walk around. I brought my hiking boots into the Central Mercado to have them fixed. I love my hiking boots, they’re a pair from LL Bean that cost $100 because I wanted shoes that wouldn’t break in six months. That didn’t make a difference in the end, because they ripped out by the time I made it to Ecuador. By the time I got to the Altiplano, the left shoe had a four inch hole in the side that filled with sand, and the right was slowly disintegrating. I was afraid I’d have to buy some sort of Bolivian Mining Boot, which, while it would have been cool, would also have been really uncomfortable. I took my shoes into the Mercado, and the cobbler couple told me that it would cost S/20 ($8) to repair the shoes, get the sand out and replace the sole-pads. I swapped into my sandals, realizing I hand put on a blue sock and a bleach-stained brown sock which were now highly visible. The cobblers did an incredible job, double stitching, glue, everything. Now they even fit better than before, which is a little baffling.

After the market we stopped in a bakery where I got a slice of bread pudding that I swear tasted like a Halls Mentholyptus cough drop.

We walked the ten blocks to the waterfront, along the way passing through several small street markets, some sort of marching band gearing up in street and a group of old Aymara women dancing with 600ml beers in the street to tinny music played out of a blown 500-watt Peavey speaker. I bought a small bag of bells from one of the stalls for my goat and presents. I think I’m going to go back and buy more since they were incredibly cheap and of a higher quality than what you’d find in Fairbanks. The waterfront was nice and more than a little surreal (sometimes it’s hard to connect “Oh, it’s Lake Titicaca with “I AM standing on the SHORE of LAKE TITICACA”). There’s a large artisan market down by the lake which we walked around for a couple of hours. Everything was incredibly well made and unbelievably cheap, but the real star of the market was the fifty-five gallon drums of sodium cyanide that served no purpose that I could tell. Most of them were partly full, and I meant to ask one of the vendors why exactly they were there, but I forgot.

I found a Chifa restaurant to eat dinner in. Chifa, is Peruvian-Chinese fusion that’s everywhere here. However, there’s almost no Chinese, and the food was the most Peruvian I’ve seen yet. My plate was stir-fried French fries and fried rice with hot dogs. We also got something labled the “Triple”, which contained all four Peruvian food groups: rice, pasta, french fries and hot dogs, all re-fried together in a wok.

After dinner we needed to buy groceries at the supermarket. As always, the music was turned up to the point where it was hard to hear other people, and it was blaring a combination of Latin electronica and eclectic English music. I remember a couple of disco tracks, Karmachameleon and Smooth Criminal clearly. They also seem to play “Staying Alive” almost every I’m in a store, and the Electronics department usually has “Gangnam Style” playing really loud out of a display-model stereo. Putumayo has it all wrong.