Bill and Wendy's ickcillint adventures

I guess I had never really seen a desert. I know, we talk about Kamloops as being semi-desert and I guess I thought that the desert was just a little drier.  I also know, I have seen pictures of the Sahara Desert and camel's being jockeyed across them, but it is not the same as seeing it for the first time.  Seeing an actual desert is  a realization. We think of sand as being inviting, relaxing, and soft.  However, the scene of a real desert is something quite extraordinary and absolutely opposite. It is barren, bleak, unadulterated, not a single bit of growth, not a pebble or a twig. As we travelled from Arequipa north to PIsco and Lima, the Peruvian Desert announced it's advent by an increasingly dry, lunar type landscape of lava rocks and sand.  Finally, the landscape changed.  There was just desert sand.  We travelled through hundreds of miles of sand, just sand.  I guess I imagined roads through deserts as being flat and straight, like Prairie roads. Instead, the hig

Sent from my iPad I might as well tell of our our Colca Canyon hike. After a 6 hour bus ride from Arequipa we arrived at the small village of Cabanaconde in  the afternoon. The plan was we would leave the next morning and in preparation for the hike we spoke to locals about the different ways down the canyon from Cabanaconde and the ways back up. Although there appears to be 3 trails realisically we were told there were only 2. There is a steep trail which some choose to take to go down and to come back up. It is called the more dangerous of the 2 trails and I was not certain if that was going down or coming up.  Although the canyon is described as the highest or second highest in the world that does not accurately describe the hike. Cabanaconde is located at about 3250 metres and the Oasis at the bottom of the trail is at about 1150 metres. Therefore the elevation change is about 1100 metres but the canyon rim is well above the village.  At any rate, It is steep and caution is

Well it seems that way. I am a vegetable hound. I love vegetables.  At a buffet, I eschew all the other things like main courses, desserts and other things for a load of fresh vegetables.  As a person with a gluten intolerance, I don't/can't eat breads, pastas or desserts. Bill, on the other hand, hates vegetables and loves bread,  desserts and pastas.  He eats bread all three meals.  He cannot pass a McDonalds without buying a cono. He cannot pass a helado (ice cream) stand without sampling the fresa (strawberry) ice cream.  He indulges in pie and ice-cream, butter and jam.  He regularly has pasta and pizza. Bill has lost a lot of weight. I have not. I rest my case.  Vegetables are fattening.

We have only two weeks left in South America.  We grieve. We have only two weeks left in South America.  Yahoo! The human condition is always in flux between two realities.  We are caught in the flux. It is torture.

Lake TItikaka is amazing.  It is over 8000 sq kilometres, so large that when we first saw it, we were discombobulated - it looks like the ocean.  It is the highest fresh water navigable lake in the world, situated at 3800 meters above sea level.  Jacques Coustea studied this lake in the 1970's, looking for the lost city of the Incas. He never did find it, but he did find toads (1 billion of them) that  were no longer amphibious, but had grown breathing sacks and lived up to 400 feet deep. What is even more fascinating about the lake is the way the Peruvian people have managed to use the reeds that grow along the shores of the lake.  They have built floating islands and constructed sturdy reed homes and boats from the reeds.  It is really something to behold - like visiting the floating boats in Vietnam.  Hard to believe that this is America. Several islands dot the lake and are populated by the Quechua People.  As part of our tour of the lake, we arranged to do a home stay wi

Stuck in the Mud On the way out of the jungle, we encountered a mudslide that covered the road.  I demanded to be let out as the mudslide was at the edge of a deep cliff.  Our guide, Jose, agreed it was a good idea for all to leave the vehicle while the driver drove through the mud. Low and behold, the van driver, dug the axle deep into the mud that was firm, but spongy.   We had to use a machete and a rock pick to dig out the vehicle.  Finally, we pushed the vehicle backwards only to find that a root had punctured the oil pan. We filled the ruts in the mud with rock and branches and the with Bill sitting inside the van for weight, the van crossed to the other side of the slide.  Now we had a repair job to handle as black oil seeped out into the mud. Then, as we were repairing the oil pan, along came a public transportation bus loaded with Andean men, women and children.  The bus driver ordered them all out and he tackled the road with a shovel. He then drove across the very un