Crossing The Peruvian Border Into Bolivia: Hike, Bike, And Paddle Through History

 

In Part II of Adventure Travel in Bolivia and Peru, we now cross the Peruvian border into Bolivia. Kit Parks continues her conversation with Susan Brickey and Richard Pope about their exciting adventure. Here, we learn about the Inca civilization and local people of the Andes mountains and the magical Uyuni salt flats and Isla de la Luna. We also find answers to why there is a massive train graveyard and how come tourists stay in the San Pedro prison, the cities of La Paz and Copacabana. Discover so much more about this adventure and understand why serious world travelers, Susan and Richard, put this trip in their top five!

Photos by Richard Pope

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Listen to the podcast here:

Reed Boats and Islands

When some in the population felt threatened by others, they solved the problem by taking advantage of the abundance of reeds growing in the lake and MADE Reed Islands to not only live on away from the mainland, but they also crafted these fantastical Reed BOATS!  It’s worth the flight just to check them out!

Uyuni Salt Flats

If reed boats and islands aren’t fantastical enough, head over to the Uyuni Salt Flats to see a true wonder of the world!  If you go after a rain, you’ll witness the largest mirror on Earth and get a chance to take some playful photos and appear to walk (or ride) on water.  Because the land is so flat here, you can see for miles and it plays tricks on your eyes as well!

Crossing The Peruvian Border Into Bolivia: Hike, Bike, And Paddle Through History

Peru And Bolivia Adventures Part II

This is part two of an episode that we started on Susan and Richard’s Bolivian and Peruvian adventure. It was interesting that we ended up breaking this into a two-part episode. We’re now crossing the border and going into Bolivia and seeing all the exciting things that they’ve done there. I look forward to sharing that with you. Also, at the end of the blog, I promise you some history of the Inca people because it’s such a fascinating civilization. We don’t normally cover history, but since we’re spending so much time in their territory, I thought you might be interested in some of the background. I did leave that towards the end. If you’re not into history, you don’t have to read all that in the beginning part. I found it interesting. I hope you will too. Without further ado, let’s get started.

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Let’s pick up from where we left off on our interview from last time. From the Reed Islands, now you’re getting to the border with Bolivia. Can you tell us a little bit about what you were doing that day when you exploring Copacabana and all those things?

For most of the trip, you have a private guide and a private van to take you around. We were a pretty small group, but logistically you cannot take a guided van from one country to another because of the political rules. We got on a public bus and went through the border checkpoint of Peru. We got off the bus there and had to walk across the Bolivian border. We then check-in with the immigration in Bolivia, then get back on the same bus. It was a bit of a process, but it was very quick. It’s basically just stamp and you’re through. It was easy but it was funny that we had to walk across the border.

There is one technical piece of travel that your audience might want to be aware of. We had to get our own Bolivian visa and that US citizens have to pay an extra fee for a Bolivian visa. We had to mail our passports. We had to submit an electronic application and mail our passports to the nearest Bolivian embassy.

The consulate is in Los Angeles.

We mailed it to Los Angeles. If you’re planning a trip there, you do need about three weeks ahead of time to get that process done. It was about $168 and they add the visa to your passport and then you show it to them when you go through. It was very simple. I believe you have to have a visa for Peru too, but they automatically give it to you. You don’t have to send a separate application for it. There was no extra charge for it.

I’m glad you brought that up because that’s important. You don’t want to get down there and find out you can’t get in the country. It looks like you took a boat to the Island of the Moon.

We took a motorboat out to a small Island called the Island of the Moon. This predated the Incan Empire by a fair amount, but the Incas first got there. You could see evidence of an old temple, which was built pre-Incan. There’s a rock wall that the Incas built next to it. There are these two cultures at once there. It’s a beautiful view of the Andes from this island. It was a temple. They had supposedly ritual sacrifices there, but without a written language, there’s not a lot that’s known about it that you could say positively what happened there. One time it was called the Temple of the Virgins. We’re not exactly sure if that was true.

Now, you arrived in Copacabana. Tell us about that.

We arrived in Copacabana in the evening. It was nice because the other two large cities, Puno and Cusco, were quite noisy. I don’t think you necessarily think that they’re noisy, but by the time you get to Copacabana, you realize how nice and quiet it is. It’s smaller. It’s a steep uphill from the waterfront to your hotel. There are lots of tourism there. It was a religious site. Apparently, there are huge religious gatherings there once a year where people come from many ways. I was thinking it was like the Camino in its own way.

Is it like a pilgrimage?

Yes. We’re delighted in the fact that Copacabana was smaller but in fact, when they have religious pilgrimages there, which happens at least once a year, the town gets swollen with people who traveled from all over Bolivia to attend the church there. There was a huge white church. I wouldn’t call it a cathedral, but it was a big building.

It was a typical Catholic church.

 

It was very much so. We enjoyed the quietness of the town. There are certain places you could buy things. The food was good. When we visited the church, there were cars for sale outside. They had been blessed and had flowers on them. At first, we thought maybe it was a wedding. We’re not quite sure what it was, but there were many cars out in front of the basilica dressed with flowers and people. It’s like a Saturday, Sunday market. We also hiked up to what I think were technically fourteen Catholic crosses. It’s not mentioned in our material from Active Adventures, but that was our hike. We hiked up to the highest part of the mountain.

It was a Sunday, there were many native people also hiking up, although the paths were not at all crowded. We saw one chubby little boy carrying food up because when they mix their native religion and the Catholic church, you still went to feed the god who may be there. He was carrying food up and once we got up through the fourteen stations of the cross, there were more crosses at the top. Each of the crosses had a different blessing. One was for health and you would find people had left pieces of shell or rocks or something on the cross itself as an offering to the god. When we got to the top, it was such a beautiful 360-degree view. Interestingly enough, it was a pretty hard hike. At the top, there were all sorts of little booths with people selling candy bars, drinks and crafts. You might want to talk about the little houses that were crafted.

I find it interesting. The top is called the Cabo Rios. It possibly was an Incan ritual site, but it’s now more of a Catholic site. In fact, some of the crosses were dated in the 1940s. In addition to the view though, it’s very strange to walk up there and see it look somewhat commercialized. There are all these ramshackle booths and things set up for people selling things. It’s not just drinks because you’re thirsty but a lot of people believe that if you leave an offering that represents something you want in your life, it will come true. You could buy a little toy pickup truck. You can buy a little toy house if you want a nicer house to have. You can leave it as an offering and leave some money. With the right prayer, they’ll come true for you. They’re making a good deal of money on the side off of the pilgrimage people up there.

If you leave an offering at the top of Cabo Rios that represents something you want in your life, it will come true.

Is there anything else about Copacabana in that area before we move on?

If you leave an offering at the top of Cabo Rios that represents something you want in your life, it will come true. Share on X

I think you should tell your audience that it’s not the Copacabana. It’s a Copacabana. It’s smaller than the well-known one on the coast. The word means a beautiful view of the lake or something like that.

You’re then now flying into the Bolivian capital of La Paz. Can you tell us about that? You’re seeing a train cemetery. What is that?

We drove to La Paz, a short distance and then immediately we ended up in El Alto, which is the city where the airport is above La Paz on a plateau. Shortly after getting there, you don’t even see La Paz. You take right off and fly to the big salt flats of Uyuni for the evening. We got there so late because of the flight. We were driven out in the middle of nowhere in the dark and began to wonder if there was any place to stay out there.

We thought we were kidnapped.

It makes you wonder for a minute. We were in these two SUVs and driving on these dusty roads and suddenly this big one-storey hotel appears. It’s built entirely out of salt blocks and the flooring is all ground salt when you walk in. The whole place is stark white and it’s quite striking, especially to see it at night. That was our headquarters for a couple of nights to explore the salt flats. A few things about the salt flats, there are many superlatives for it. You might think, “What’s so special about seeing a big sea of salt there? You can see those anywhere.†The thing you have to bear in mind is Uyuni is the largest salt flat in the world. It’s over 4,000 square miles and it is so flat. We were told that they can calibrate a satellite altitude by pinging laser beams off of the surface. It varies three feet over 4,000 square miles. It’s somewhat the flattest land in the entire world. You can stand out in the middle of it and you definitely see the curvature of the Earth. It’s stunning.

 

Did they tell you why it’s like that or how come it’s dry now?

It’s an ancient lake which formed over 40,000 years ago. Gradually, as the climate changed and things changed over the years, the lake evaporated and left a huge amount of salt. This is actually a great seabed from hundreds of millions of years ago. The salt content is extremely concentrated in that lake. It’s primarily dry but after the rainy season, you’ll find parts of the salt flat still flooded. When I say flooded, it’s never more than about an inch of water. That forms a perfect mirror. There are places they take you on your salt flat tours where you drive out onto this water and you can have great pictures of people walking on water and driving on water, the reflection of the sky. They say it’s the biggest mirror in the world and it does look like it.

I would encourage people to visit the salt flats if they go to Bolivia. It was definitely a unique experience because of the length of it. There’s also bubbling little hot springs from underground streams in part of it, the views of the mountains from that area. We had lunch on the salt flats. They fixed us this very nice lunch, but then a big wind came up. They said there is usually no wind at that time of day, but it made an adventure because we had to eat quickly and put the lunch away. There were also flamingos on the edge of the salt flat and we hiked up a cactus island. You might want to talk about that, Rick.

The island has coral deposits on it. It gives you that feeling like, “This is an old seafloor.†It’s an unusual juxtaposition of coral and cactus. I’ve never seen anywhere in the world like that. It’s only a few hundred feet high, but when you get to the top, you’ve got this 360-view of the salt flats in all directions. We asked about wildlife and they say there is no wildlife on the salt flats at all. On these islands that are within flying distance to the mainland, we did see birds. There a couple of different varieties, but there were sparrow-like birds out there flitting around trying to make a living off of what little there is to eat on the island.

I’ve seen photos of the salt flat, so I know what you’re talking about. Can you describe the landscape? You talked about the mirror look, but what about when it’s dry? What does that look like? Try to describe that landscape to us.

 

We posted one picture on Facebook. Even though I talked about us being in the salt flats, there are multiple people that said, “Where did the snow come from?†It looks like a big white field of snow.

The texture varies. It’s not consistent. It depends on where the moisture was most recently and when it evaporated last. It’s smooth enough that I happened to notice in one part of the day’s trip, we were driving this SUV across the salt flats to get to the northern end and we were averaging about 120 kilometers an hour. That’s moving right along and it was very smooth. You can feel a little texture under the tires, but it wasn’t bumpy at all. If you look closely, you can see there’s definite texture to the salts. It probably has these quarter-inch high bits of roughness to it, but you don’t feel it when you’re driving on it. It’s three feet over 4,000 square miles. It’s like being on a world’s biggest plane.

In some places, it reminds you of rock salt. Probably most of us are familiar with rock salt being put on sidewalks in the wintertime. Our hallways in the hotel reminded me of rock salt. They weren’t concrete or carpet. They were those salt modules.

They were very coarse crystals.

Our hotel room floor had a carpet put over the salt for our comfort. It’s a beautiful carpet by the way, very colorful.

When traveling in South America, May is a great transitional month. April is still rainy. June is dry but very touristy. Share on X

Some of the pictures I saw, maybe it’s been a long time since the rainy season, are almost looked like circular salt lily pads with the little rim around it. Did you see anything like that at all? Do you know what I’m talking about?

Yeah, especially near where the little artesian springs come up. We saw floating salt crystals too. I scooped it up and took a picture of it. You do get that effect of little round lily pads of salt.

You talked about snow. I know it didn’t snow, but you’re in a very unusual climate there because you’re up high so it’s chilly, yet you’re in a temperate region. Talk a little bit about the weather and why you chose to go in May. Give us a little overview of what you know about the weather down there.

We chose May based on the best recommendations. You can certainly travel to South America at any time of the year. Cusco is thirteen degrees south latitude and La Paz is about sixteen degrees. You’re not that far from the equator. Even though it’s technically coming into their winter, you’ll get cool daytime and nighttime temperatures, but it happens to be the start of the dry season. May is a great transitional month. April is still rainy. June is dry but very touristy. They get a lot more people there. You look at the primary people that flock to places like Peru and Bolivia, it’s Americans and Europeans for the most part. That’s their prime travel season. We thought May was a great shoulder time to go where the weather was still good. We had good luck with the weather pretty much the whole time. There were a couple of rain showers for the whole month we were down in South America. I think we timed that pretty well.

Weather-wise, do you bring thermal raincoat, the same thing if you’re hiking up a mountain or just about anywhere? Do you have to have all the four seasons clothes in your day pack?

 

Yeah. We’re prepared for about anything and surprisingly, we didn’t need that much more clothing. The worst is it cools off at night. You’ll notice that, especially on the salt flats and place like that, when the sun comes up because you feel the sun is more up in a hurry because of your latitude

The only pieces of clothing that I didn’t use that I had packed was a pair of shorts and a short-sleeve shirt. Even though it was warm, it was usually long pants, long sleeve shirt. It could get intense, but it was nice weather for us the whole time.

That reminds me as far as the salt flats, UV protection. The salt flat is high. It’s 12,000 feet. You’re sixteen degrees latitude. When the sun comes out like it usually does over the absolutely pure white surface, I imagine the average person could sunburn in about five minutes. You need to be fully covered and have an intense sunblock on the whole time you’re out there and the sunglasses. You don’t want to forget that stuff because you might have a good day, but you’d be very miserable the next day if you don’t take precautions.

That’s good advice, thanks. Was there anything that surprised you about this trip?

I was thinking of one thing that surprised me both about Peru and Bolivia that I realized I don’t yet have a good understanding of. That is at the community level, there seems to be a form of government. For example, we ate lunch out on a hillside on our way to Puno. We were looking down on this small village and our guide said he would love to own a home in that small village. It was quite picturesque and you could understand that. We talked to him a little bit about how that would be done. First of all, someone would want to sell something. He said you would have to get the community’s approval to do that and move in.

 

I wasn’t quite sure of the sense of community and what level of governance there is, but I noticed that in both Peru and Bolivia that you would talk a lot about the community and that the community owned this. Every community might have a pickup, but it would be owned by the community. It might not be one person’s pickup. We talked about people not having a lot of material wealth in the way you might think of it in the United States, but they were wealthy in their own regard because they always had their own property that was paid for. They may not be paying for electricity or water, but in some communities, there were solar panels that were new. I didn’t understand the governance around this sense of community. I thought that was something I wanted to learn more about once we were home.

It sounds almost like the co-ops they would have in New York. I don’t know about other places, but when I was growing up, you couldn’t just randomly sell your condo. The whole condo building had to approve whoever you sold it to. It sounds something along those lines.

Yeah, it sounds similar.

What Susan said is that our guide pointed out we were up in some remote areas of Peru and looking at people who lived in shacks and had a little bit of land. He said, “These people in my mind are richer than the people in probably 2/3 of the people in Lima. In Lima, like any big city somewhere, if you don’t have a lot of money, housing is expensive, you’re always struggling and there’s a high crime rate. They go out in the countryside, there’s pretty much no crime. Even though people don’t have a lot of material goods, they own the land, they have animals, they can feed themselves. They can usually afford a solar panel and get a little bit of electricity. They can make their own clothing. They grow potatoes. In many ways, although their net worth may be low but they’re richer than the people on the lower rungs of the big cities. It’s something to think about.

I often find in my travels too that many of the communities I go to, and I go to a lot of developing countries, they seem happier than Americans to me. There’s something to having it simpler where every room in your house you use every day instead of having massive buildings you don’t use. There’s something that’s eye-opening about traveling and seeing some people are happier than we are doing with a lot less. What I’ve got to ask you about is the train graveyard. Tell us about that.

Don’t forget sunblock when traveling because you might have a good day, but you'd be very miserable the next if you don't take precautions. Share on X

We had a very brief visit to the railway graveyard right side outside of the town. Uyuni is right on the edge of town. It’s an interesting story in that Bolivia, with their mineral extraction and all the salt deposits, they had to build a rail line across what is now part of Northern Chile to the coast to have a port for export. In the process of building this rail line, the war of the Pacific broke out and the result of several years of war, basically Chile won the war and they extended their country and it made Bolivia landlocked. They used to have their own coastline. With no way to export, the rail line sat there and all these imported locomotives from Britain and all the rail lines that were there have now sat in the desert since about 1880. There are these enormous piles of rusted locomotive sitting around in this area. There’s nothing around but the edge of town and salts. You could see the rail line going off in the distance, the heat shimmering on the rails and nothing is stirring. It’s a rather interesting experience to see this grand failed experiment. It must have cost them a fortune and to have it completely fail must have been heartbreaking.

You wonder why they couldn’t sell them or something like that rather than let them rot. The image in my head is very interesting. I haven’t seen the pictures of it yet, but I’m looking forward to checking that out. You mentioned your guides. How about telling us a little bit about them.

Our guide was from Cusco and he’d gone to school in Lima. He was exceptionally good. He spoke the languages and he related to us very well. He was specially trained in mountain rescue and first aid. He was very kind and thoughtful to us, but also to every person that he interacted with. He knew so much history. He had such a good political understanding of the area that he could have talked all night about it in a very valuable way. It’s not filling our heads with facts, although there were lots of facts but getting us to think about what that meant for life in those areas. When you’re in Bolivia, you need to have a Bolivian guide. That’s part of the Bolivian requirements. There was an additional guide that took us out on Lake Titicaca and stayed with us for the days we were there.

There was an additional guide when we were in the salt flats and they were all excellent too. We had a different guide for bicycling who knew his area and knew how to repair bikes, although I’m sure that Bruno, our Active Adventures guide, could have done any of those things too. Because we are required to have Bolivian guides, we had people who lived in the salt flat area or lived in the islands. They were very skilled and very knowledgeable. I have found that traveling with Active Adventures, I’ve done four trips with them and I think Rick has done three, that they always get excellent guides. The food is always good and healthy and you have a quality trip. We had a traveling companion with us in Bolivia and she had read an article about how unsafe the Bolivian highways were and how you had more vehicle accidents there than in any other country in the world, at least a country who reported their statistics. Because you’re traveling with Active Adventures, they’ve qualified the vans and the drivers, so we felt safe.

I love my trip with them in New Zealand. Where else have you been with them?

 

I did the North and South Islands of New Zealand and then we did the Jaguar trip before this Chinchilla trip.

I did the South Island trip to New Zealand and then Jaguar as well.

I want to do your trip now too. New Zealand blew me out of the water. I love that trip. That was the best trip, particularly some of the things we did on the North Island. It was great. What are the favorite stories that you tell about this trip?

Because we are active people who hike, bike and kayak, our friends want to know about those parts of the adventure and how they folded in to what we were doing. We were able to do it and be active every day. It folded in nicely and smoothly, which is probably the experience you also had with Active Adventures in New Zealand. Some highlights were the Uros Islands, the Reed Islands and the people there, the salt flats. You had to fly because of the distance to get there, but it’s critically one of the most recommended things to do. We didn’t talk about everything we did there, but we also visited a small museum that a man had put together himself. He didn’t charge for people to come, but he gathered historical artifacts.

He also had a little cave with two mummies in it and a lot of artwork. I would say the Uros Island and the salt flats, but I also love La Paz. I would have loved to have spent more time hiking outside and around La Paz. The cable car views of La Paz is unique in my experience. I’ve had other people tell me that the other big cities they’ve been to where the roads are small. They have to tear down historical buildings to put in roads and people don’t have cars anyway. These cable cars crisscross La Paz. We took the cable car to the highest point of La Paz. If we’d have had more days, we could have traveled all through La Paz by the cable cars. That was also very interesting.

That’s where your trip ends is in La Paz, so somebody could easily do that.

We get a full-day tour of La Paz. We got to see the outside of the San Pedro Prison, which is a whole story in itself. One of the most incredibly off-the-wall prisons in the world.

We can’t end without telling us why. You’ve got to tell us that.

There’s been an amazing book written about the San Pedro Prison called Marching Powder. It’s a prison for relatively low-risk people. A lot of them were drug czars, but these are not like super risky people. It’s basically an entire city in itself. You buy your way in. Things have changed a bit over the years and they’ve tried to tone this down a little bit. At the time in the ‘90s to early 2000 when this book was written, bribery was big down there.

You bribe your way in and where you stay depends on how much money you have. If you want a super safe place with good neighbors, you could buy into the five-star rated section. If you’re in the one-star rated section, you’re crammed in five people to a cell and you don’t get a whole lot. Anything you want inside the walls like restaurants, groceries, anything you name, you get. It’s a small town all by itself. You get to walk around the outside and look at San Pedro. You could take the cable cars around La Paz. You get to go to the Valley of the Moon, which has incredible structures that are eroded like pinnacles and thins. That’s pretty cool and you get a bit of cultural history.

You could see the main square. They have had multiple revolutions in Bolivia. The main square still has bullet holes in it, which they think is a good thing to leave up as a reminder of their recent past. The little cobbled streets with a little witch doctor shops. You could get to wander by and look at the things they can sell there that come from all over the country and deep in the Amazon, things that are imported there or whatever rituals you want to perform. It’s quite interesting.

That does sound cool. I forgot about the markets, you had the little witch doctor stalls. Is there anything that strikes your fancy when you saw that?

The witch doctor, I didn’t know what to expect. I expected the guy in a grass skirt, long hair or something, shrunken heads. It wasn’t quite that way. These people do sell quite a few things from the Amazon and other places there that are crafted to have a special religious significance to people who believe in shamanism and want to do things and cure things the old ways. You can buy all kinds of herbs and potions. It doesn’t look quite as exotic as I expected, but it’s still quite interesting to see those kinds of things and a lot of it is symbolic too. You want to buy a symbol of something that you want to have good luck brought to you. You can get it at the witch doctor stall. They have a little bit of everything.

Can you tell just by looking at it that’s a witch doctor’s stall?

 

We were guided to one. It doesn’t say that across the awning of the shop, but you could look at the paraphernalia inside and get an idea that this is not your usual K-Mart.

These are stores. I thought you’re out in the outdoor market. You’re going into a store.

They’re storefronts. It’s a little shop that is typically maybe ten feet wide or long and narrow. There’s a whole bunch of people side by side on this. There’s a street in La Paz that’s well-known for this. They all congregate in the same area.

I don’t know if they would ever have a door that could close. These are open-air stalls. They are stores but it’s not like an open market where everything’s out on tables. I can’t think of a door that would close. I don’t know if they would pull down the cloth.

They could have had a roll-top. They’re solid walls anyhow.

It’s more like things you would find in third world countries.

Overall, I know you’re active every day. On a scale of 1 to 5, and 5 is the most difficult, what would you place it as far as difficulty level.

I don’t think the Bolivian trip was as strenuous as our trip to Peru. I would call it a 3.

In a way I would call it a 2. Part of that is caution because you’re in elevation. You’re almost always at 12,000 feet. Even young people are sometimes challenged from 8,000 feet up. I think that you’re a little bit less active because of the risk of elevation and not knowing how people will do. We were active enough to feel like we had a challenge almost every day. That was important to us.

You guys are very well-traveled. How is this adventure compared to some of the other adventures you’ve had in your life?

I would consider it to be in the top five. I find it very difficult to compare trips because we’re often doing something totally different. I’ve been to Antarctica. I would certainly put my New Zealand trip with Active Adventures in my top five. The flora and fauna there are so unique. This was a totally different country than I’ve ever visited before. Our guides reminded us that South American countries tend to be more alike than not. I don’t know if that’s totally true, but Bolivia and Peru were somewhat similar. It was beautiful. It was unique. The food was wonderful. The people were warm and welcoming and we got to be active every day. For me, Lake Titicaca and kayaking on it was a bucket list item. I would rank it very high.

How about you, Richard?

Susan and I have done a lot of different travels apart from each other until we hooked up. I have a little different background. To me culturally, this is one of the most interesting trips I’ve done. I’ve been to the Dolomites in Italy. I’ve been to Patagonia. I’ve been to the Alps in New Zealand. I’ve seen some spectacular mountain scenery. While the Andes were great, the mountain experience here wasn’t quite the same but to me, I didn’t go for that. I went for the wonder of the Incan empire and what it was like to see it in person. Who wouldn’t want to see Lake Titicaca and salt flats? They are two unique areas in the world. It made this all come together for me. It’s definitely one of the top five trips I’ve done around the world.

What’s on the bucket list still? Do you have anything planned?

We’re booked for a trip to the Japanese Alps in Hokkaido. It’s run by a different company. It’s the one I’ve used before. They’re based out of Portland. They only offer this trip once every two or three years. To me, to go to Japan and see nothing but cultural things would probably be not a bucket list trip for me, but to combine that with seeing the Japanese Alps, which look as nice as any Alpine place I’ve ever seen for hiking, I thought, “Let’s try this.†It’s what I like to put it off until next year, but this is one of the few years they’re offering it. We got back from our trip, which had ten flights between the Jaguar and Chinchilla trips. There are ten separate air flights and they wanted us to book our flights. We almost couldn’t face doing that. After a couple of days rest, we decided to go for it. We’re booked now for Japan

Have fun. When you get back, definitely give me a call. I’d love to have you on the show and talk about it. Thank you, Susan and Richard, for coming on the show. It’s been great. You’ve given us so much information. I’ve now added another trip to the list of places I’ve got to go.

That sounds good.

I’m looking forward to having you back.

We love it.

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I know it looks like we’re finished with the show, but for those of you interested, I’ve got more about the Inca empire itself. It is a fascinating civilization. The Inca empire itself covered parts of what is now Peru, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador and Bolivia. The Inca civilization is the largest pre-Colombian empire. It is one of only five civilizations that’s considered pristine, meaning it did not have any outside influence to create the civilization. They created it all by themselves. It’s an indigenous group with no outside influence to form a new civilization. Think of that, only five civilizations in the history of mankind. That in and of itself is pretty cool.

Like Genghis Khan, awful though he may be, he was a brilliant manager and leader because he not only conquered people to take over the territory, he assimilated and learned from them. That’s what the Incas did as well. That probably, and this is just my speculation, was one of the reasons for their success. They believed in the sun god, Inti. The Inca king was considered the son of the sun. They were able to do these incredible archeological wonders without the benefit of any wheeled vehicles. They didn’t have any draft animals. All they have are some llamas and some alpacas, which can’t carry a whole lot. Yet they still did this incredible massive stonework, which I’m imagining was done by the slave labor. They didn’t have any knowledge of iron or steel and no method of writing to pass on knowledge.

Knowledge is passed on they believed through the weavings, these knotted strings they called quipo that would help them keep records perhaps by way of counting knots or something like that. That’s how they were able to communicate. The knotted string is a bit of a writing system even though it doesn’t use letters. They had no monetary system. They were pretty much just barter. There’s also a collective belief that you gave to the system. It’s almost like a socialistic system where everybody had to give labor to the Inca rulers. In exchange for this labor, it was reciprocated back by granting the people access to land and providing food and drink whenever they’re doing celebratory feast. There was a give and take. There was a reciprocal relationship between the people, “If I need some of this, I trade you this.†The regular barter system.

They were also a bit socialistic in that they had a vertical system of assessing and distributing whatever the resources were. A bit of whoever needs, gets more, and whoever has, gives more. For them, it did work. Without any of the tools that we’ve talked about, they still were able to create one of the world’s most impressive civilizations. They did this fantastic terrace work. By carving out these terraces on the mountainsides, they were able to create an abundance of food in this climate that gets rather cold at night. They were able to compensate by doing it in this terrace system. Things are going pretty well.

The Inca empire started in the early 13th century until they’re conquered by the Spaniard conquistadors in 1572. How all that came about is a guy by the name of Francisco Pizarro and his brothers had traveled South from Panama. They saw the wealth, abundance and resources of the Inca people. They went back to Spain and asked the Queen for permission to conquer it and Francisco wanted to be its Viceroy. In 1532, they returned with 168 men, a single cannon, 27 horses, the soldiers had lances, long swords and steel armor plates. The Inca people on the other hand, even though they were overwhelmingly large in numbers, had never seen a horse and had no concept how to fight cavalry.

All they have are stone and wood. They had a little bit of copper and bronze at this point, but they had such significant technical disadvantages. None of their weapons could pierce the armor that it was a pretty quick fight. It didn’t take long for the Spanish people to conquer. They brought disease, particularly it started with smallpox. Because the Incas has a very extensive and well-managed street and road systems, smallpox traveled quickly and eradicated a lot of the native peoples. A couple of other interesting things too about the thought processes of the Inca people. At the time, the infant mortality rate was high, so parents didn’t consider their kids almost as part of the family. They didn’t start worrying about them because many of them died until they were about 2 or 3 years old. They’re like, “This one’s going to make it.â€

They would have a big ceremony, the Ruda Chico ritual. The children were celebrated and welcomed to the family at this current stage of ignorance because they don’t know anything yet about the world. All the relatives would come to celebrate their entrance from being in the state of inexperience to start their journey to learn about reason and learn how to become part of the family and their role in society. They’re in this section until they hit puberty. In the meantime, before puberty, they’re allowed to have their folly stage, which both sexes would be able to have outside relationships without having to worry about getting pregnant. Once they hit puberty, next comes the big celebration again. There’s this second main celebration and this is the time that they now become adults. Still at this point, they don’t even get ripe for serious labor until it’s around the time of their marriage, which for most of them was around age twenty and a few years younger than that for the women as is typical in many societies.

Males and females had traditional roles. Men did a lot of the labor and the women did the cooking and took care of the kids and all that stuff. They were still considered equal partners and it took both partners to make a whole unit. Unlike a lot of societies, the females could inherit and not only could, but they also did. The inheritance was passed down from female to female and male to male, so parallel lines of descendants. As far as their religion goes, they believed in reincarnation and upon death, you would follow a long road with the assistance of a black dog. Heaven, although they didn’t call it that, would be a field covered with flowers and in the distance, snow-capped mountains.

If you’re a good Inca, you follow their moral code. It’s basically three rules. Do not steal, do not lie, and do not be lazy. If you are a good Inca, the sun’s warmth you would enjoy in your future life versus being in the cold ground. The Inca nobility wanted to separate themselves from the regular people. They practice something called a cranial deformation. Whenever there was a newborn of a noble, they would wrap tight cloth straps around the head and make the skull conical, like the Coneheads of the old Saturday Night Live. In this way, you could see at a glance if that somebody was of noble descent. The Incas did practice human sacrifice including child sacrifice. This happened more around important events or whenever there’s a famine.

They did not have a written language. A lot of things have been backed into the thought. They’ve worked around to figure out some of the things that we learn about the Incas. It’s truly an incredible civilization that whenever I make my way down there in South America, I can’t wait to explore and see firsthand. While there were some earlier civilizations in the Andes, the indigenous people, because they were so isolated, had to come up with some creative ways to solve their problems. One of which we already mentioned, the quipos, which were the string knots. In that way, they were able to communicate via the number of knots, the style of knots, the colors of the knots, different information. It was a language of sort.

They didn’t have the wheel, so they only traveled by foot. They didn’t have the pack animals to carry heavy loads or to move the rocks, for example. All they have is the llamas, which can carry at most 45 kilograms or about 100 pounds. They weren’t big or strong enough to be used for plowing or for riding. They didn’t have very good soil, it’s thin. The climate’s cold, only seasonal precipitation and no flat land. They came up with the terraces. Because of their challenging environment, they use their brains and came up with this sophisticated agricultural technology. They learned to domesticate large-seeded plants such as wheat and barley. It wasn’t long when they finally domesticate the horses and the cattle.

In the desert areas, they developed irrigation. By terracing and exploiting micro-climates and selective breeding, they were able to conquer some of the climatic problems that they had. In order to maximize their possibilities of success, they experimented with planting several crops at several different elevations and exposures to have the best chance of success. All in all, it’s an impressive accomplishment for people that did not have the basic accoutrements that we have for civilization. I cannot wait to explore it in person.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this. It was planned to be a one-part series, but we’re having such a good time and learning so much about it that this turned into a two-part series. I’m sure that was fun. We’ll have a travel planner for this episode that you will get automatically with the monthly newsletter, which I hope you signed up for. You can sign up at Kit@ActiveTravelAdventures.com just by sending me an email or by going to the website at ActiveTravelAdventures.com and click on the newsletter button there. Susan and Richard sent lots of photos. I’d like to share those with you too on the website. Their webpage will be ActiveTravelAdventures.com/bolivia. If you haven’t done so already, please make sure you subscribe to the show. I also encourage you to sign up and subscribe to the Adventure Travel Show, which teaches you the how-tos of adventure travel. I hope you’re enjoying the program. Until next time, adventure on.

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