The Great South American Adventure

I´ve been up to a lot recently, hence the long wait between entries, both due to the increased demand on my time and to having a lot more stuff to write about, making the prospect of doing so even more daunting. However, I have summoned up the inspiration and have managed to free up some spare time to devote to my beloved readers, if they haven´t given up on checking already. One of the things that has happened is I have had my camera, iPod and PSP stolen out of my locked bag, from between my feet on a bus from Nazca to Ica, so to see the photo´s that go with this section of the blog you will have to check out hutchi´s flicker,

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8075577@N02/sets/72157600767324997/

monkey´s blog

http://randomphotomonkey.blogspot.com/

and this site which has photos of us riding down the worlds most dangerous road, the password is "photos"

http://www.shutterfly.com/progal/sign_in.jsp?aid=768a5498cf40ad58caed

and for some photos of Lima taken with my new camera, check out my flickr at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12875483@N00/

Anyway, after Cusco, Hutch, James and I headed to Copocaban to check out lake titikaka. From Copocabana most people take tours on the Island of the Sun, which they reached by ferry. However, we figured we didn´t need any fancy, motor powered ferry to get to the Island of the Sun, so we hired a wonderful little sail boat for the very economical rate of 30 bolivianos (about AU$5) per hour. We later named the vessel crapsack, soon after we had given up on ever reaching the island. When we left port, the wind was heading more or less straight back into port, making it very dificult for us to leave, to the great ammusement of those watching from the shore. However, after a while the wind started to turn around and we started to make a bit of ground. We ended up making it around a point, which we had taken as our new goal after conceding that the island of the sun was out of reach, so we decided to turn around and head back in, only to find that the wind was then blowing into our faces again coming from the direction of Copacabana, our intended resting place for the night. With my sailing savy, I reasured the guys that we should be able to zig zag back in without any problem. However, poor old crapsack was not the best boat at pointing upwind, not actually having a centerboard, and we were finding it dificult to make ground. In fact we were getting blown back around the point we were so proud to reach. We decided to row back around the point, then hopefully the wind would somehow be different and we could sail back in. Rowing proved to be more dificult than expected, until we moved the oars from the front to the middle of the boat and took the sails down. It was good to finally put all those rowing trainings to good use. All the five ergos I did were not done in vain. Pretty soon we were back around the point, and with the sight of Copacaban so far away we decided to try the sails again. We broke the paddle off the end of one of the oars while moving them back to the front of the boat, so we had no other choice but to sail in, or so we thought. As soon as we put the sails back up we were getting blown backwards and the waves were washing us into the rocky shore, so we "decided" to beach the boat just as it crashed sideways into one of the bigger river rocks, as if we had any other choice. So we took the sails down, pulled the rudder in, jumped out and started trying to pull the boat up onto shore. Luckily for us, a much more sea savy kid came along and started to help us out, first advising us to stop trying to pull the boat sideways over big rocks and push it around them instead, and showing us a good trick using the broken oar handle to slide the boat on up the beach. After we got it far enough out of water he asked for money then left and we started our long walk back into town. I was worried and thought we would be thrown in gaol for destruction of private property or something, but as we were about to get into town, the guy who had sent us on our journey came out to meet us on his push bike. He asked us where the boat was, we pointed and tried to explain, then he said we owed him 70 bolivianos for the extra time we had the boat. We paid and asked how he was going to get it back. He was going to ride out and row it back in. We explained that an oar was broken so he turned his bike around and started to ride back to his storage shead. I could not believe our luck and felt bad that this guy was going to row back by himself in the dark. He didn´t even charge us extra for the time it would take for him to do it. We figured that 70 bs would be going straight to his pocket, which is a fair bit for locals, but we still felt bad but helpless and lucky at the same time. Anyway, it´s a funny story. That´s all for now folks. Signing out, Marc/Plummers.