Bolivia Expedition Dispatch

June 18, 2008 – The Beautiful Town of Copacabana

It‘s the morning of the 18th of June and I’m calling you from the Plaza of the beautiful Spanish colonial and native town of Copacabana. This is a very historic and really a very beautiful place on the shores of Lake Titicaca, 12,500 ft. above sea level. Our team is off down the road again this morning approaching the Cordillera Real range and our base camp, where we will begin our first days of climbing. We will be posting those adventures in the coming days.

Now I’d like to wrap up some of the great adventures we have had at high altitude travelling across the Altiplano in Bolivia in the last few days. You know we pulled out of La Paz on the 16th and we went first to the pre-egan, of course it’s pre-colonial, very ancient site of Tiahuanaco. We observed giant, very impressive monoliths there. It’s a very spiritual and intriguing place. We walked around the giant monoliths, we visited the museum, and we soaked in the blue sky and altitude and felt like we really arrived in Bolivia as we wandered around Tiahuanaco on the morning of the 16th.

We drove along the shores of Lake Titicaca towards Copacabana, then took a ferry across and yesterday we took a boat about an hour and a half across the lake from our hotel on the shores of Lake Titicaca and we hiked along the island of Isla de Sol or island of the sun for about 8.5 hours. Our captain of the boat was only 13 years old and did a fabulous job. We visited along the way, We ran across an Ayamaraya priest, a holy man. He blessed us all with holy water that had come from a special spring. He asked us our names and translated it into Ayamarayan and gave us each a blessing for good luck in the mountains above. It was a really powerful time. Rob Dunn especially, who is part native himself from North America, had a special connection with this native Indian priest.