Trip to the Lake.

So almost 10 years ago my husband (boyfriend then) went to Argentina for 10 months. During that time he took a trip to bolivia and visited Lake Titicaca and took pictures and mailed them to me. But even though the picture was gorgeous...it was nothing compared to the beauty we saw when we went there in person! Friday morning our 15 passanger van (just for the 5 of us) arrived in front of our apartment building with our private tour guide, Gustavo. He was with us for the entire tour. First we drove out of the valley (LaPaz) and up to the plateau of El Alto. The city there is almost all Aymara Indians. It is a busy, crowded, poor town. Most of the buildings were brick and half the walls were as if a war had happened, tearing them to the ground. But no such war...just ran out of money to build. So people just live in drafty buildings with a couple of walls. The further out we drove, the more scarce the building became. We drove through the altiplano which is a very FLAT piece of land between the mountain ranges. The sun was behind us on the way out so it was tough to get pictures with the haze of the sunrise but to the eye it was amazing. It took us about an hour to drive to Tiwanaku Indian Ruins. There was a museum at the ruin site with the history of the mysterious Tiwanaku with artifacts that have been found on site. We were able to walk on the actual dig site! Walk up the stairs that have yet to be brushed clean and walk on the mound that will someday be the temple uncovered. It was amazing. It felt so ancient. The archeologists were digging and brushing away the dust in one area of the site. Local indigenous people were working, carrying the dirt away in wheelbarrels. There were 3 temples in 3 levels. The highest is a tribute to the Gods or heaven so it is above the ground on a built up teared mound. The second is a ground level temple celebrating life on earth and the third was below the ground, a tribute to mother earth (Pachamama). You'll have to see facebook for all of the amazing pictures. So far in the dig, the 2nd temple has been dug up (over the past 30 years) with all of the walls perfectly intact. Not one stone missing! It's incredible the detail and advances in their civilization. At one section of the wall there is a hole that when whispered into magnifies your voice to be booming loud. Like a stone age P.A. system. Amazing. The ground of the temple is angled so rain water would run into sisterns and collect for irrigation of the plant life and other needs. We walked around the dusty ruins for over an hour and the last stop was near the exit, the most recent discovery, just 6 months ago they were leveling the ground for the rocky walkway and they hit something. It was an ingraved stone, maybe 8 ft long lying on it's side. Cool huh. It's now stading upright. We had to drive from there all the way back to El Alto to get the road going North to the lake. Back through the vastness of the altiplano we relaxed and had some snacks. 1 hour and 30 minutes and we started to see a patch of bright blue! This lake is fresh water, crystal clear beauty! We arrived in Huatajata around lunch time. A man took our bags to our room, our tour guide took our orders while we lounged for a couple of minutes in the lobby of this beautiful hotel and then we went to an outdoor museum learning about the making of reed boats and their history. You'll have to google the Limachi Brothers. While sally was facinated by the spool of thread being spun as a toy by an Aymara woman the others learned about the Limachi brothers in the shed. So I can't tell you much. After that we ate in the beautiful lakeside dining room and then had free time to roam about and photograph. Here are some of my faves. I'll catch you up on the rest of the trip tomorrow.