New Years with Bertha and Harald

We are in La Paz, Bolivia visiting two wonderful friends from the international high school, or United World College (UWC), that I attended in New Mexico.

Bertha is my dear friend from the UWC who is from Bolivia. I have wanted to visit her for years! Bertha lives in Switzerland with her husband Harald, who was also in my UWC class and who is from Germany. I saw Bertha at our ten year reunion, six years ago, but I had not seen Harald since we graduated in 1992! We lucked out that they are in Bolivia visiting Bertha´s family for the holidays. It is so wonderful to spend time with both of them, and also to meet Bertha´s family members, who are just as nice as Bertha is!

On a beautiful sunny day we visited the ruins of Tiwanaku, just outside of La Paz. The ruins are pre-Inca, from the Tiwanaku culture. Now, they are an important cultural site and Bertha attended a huge party there when Bolivia´s indigenous president, Evo Morales, was inaugurated.

We had a picnic outside the ruins, and took a minibus back to La Paz just as it started to rain. For the first few miles of our trip back, one passenger rode on the ladder on the back outside of the minibus. I think he did that because he couldn´t afford the fare. Yikes - we were glad when he got to his stop.

We had the most beautiful new years ever, on Lake Titicaca. The huge lake, at over 11,000 feet altitude, is one of the highest lakes in the world, and contains Isla del Sol, the legendary birthplace of the Incas. We joined a tour group for the first night, which was nice because everything was arranged and we spent New Years Eve with a really nice group of travelers from Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Quebec and Argentina.

Our boat took us to Isla del Sol, where burros carried our backpacks up the steep stone stairs to our hotel. Although we´re used to carrying backpacks, I don´t think any of us could have carried them up such a steep climb at that altitude. So thank goodness for the burros, which the locals use too, even for carrying all of their water from a spring at the base of the island up to the small villages above.

We had a New Years Eve party with the other people from our tour, with a buffet dinner of trout, potatoes and choclo (a Bolivian corn with huge kernels), and local folk musicians playing traditional Andean music. We had the whole New Years shindig with paper hats and horns, and dancing after midnight. We also observed a Bolivian custom of wearing new red underwear and eating 12 grapes, one for each month of the year. I think this was the first time I was awake for New Years Eve in years! It was a lot of fun.

The next day our guide, Vicente, took us by boat to Isla de la Luna where we visited a ruin and participated in an Aymara ceremony. It was similar to the ceremony that we did with Basilio, the shaman in Peru, except that we were present for the burning of the offering. Everyone felt peaceful and tranquil afterwards. We then had a traditional Aymara buffet, prepared by Vicente´s mother, on a cloth placed on the ground. (trout, potatoes, choclo ...) It was really nice.

We then departed from the tour to spend two more nights on the island, which were really relaxing and beautiful.

The people on Isla del Sol are Aymara, from the Tiwanaku culture. They are friendly to tourists, usually greeting us with a Good Morning, etc. The kids liked to ask us for candy, which we did not give them, but Bertha gave away her New Years horn which made two little boys really happy.

The island is agricultural, and the people farm small terraced plots of potatoes, corn, quinoa and fava beans. They rotate the crops each year, for a total of four years, and then let the land rest for four years.

There are no cars or vehicles on the island, and it is usually quiet except for the sound of donkeys, pigs and sheep. The llamas don´t seem to make any noise!

We stayed in a beautiful "hotel" which was really more like a house with four rooms for rent. From the balcony we had a beautiful view of Lake Titicaca and several islands, and mountains over 18,000 feet high on the far side of the lake. There were llamas and sheep, with babies, outside the rooms. Every adobe house in the town seemed to have a few farm animals associated with it. In front of our hotel there was a mother pig with several piglets living in an adobe pen. One of the piglets died while we were there, in a rainstorm, leaving two. The bigger piglet tried to prevent the smaller one from getting any of the mother´s milk.

We took a boat to the north end of the island, and visited a ruin guided by a 12-year-old Aymara boy named Robert. Then we began a 3-hour hike to the south end of the island on a "road" that is actually a very nice 4-foot wide path with stones lined along the edges. In many places the path was of stone, and in other places it was dirt. A horse-drawn cart could have passed along this road, but we did not see any carts or horses or cattle on this island. I think that donkeys are better suited to this steep terrain.

Aside from a eucalyptus grove, there were few trees on the island. The hillsides are either used for grazing animals or for agricutlrue.

We spent a total of three nights on the island. It was a beautiful place, extremely quiet and peaceful. And we shared the wonderful company of Bertha and Harald.