November 10, 2011
Wednesday night I met up with John and Elisha for dinner at a Japanese restaurant in their hotel. It was good and we were the only ones in there and as we were eating the 3 women from New Zealand who we met on the hike on the "Isla de Sol" walked in and sat down (small world). We chatted briefly and John had his laptop down there and researched the biggest lakes in the world and found out Lake Titicaca is #18 in the world. Elisha wasn't feeling well and so they said they were going to take Thursday off and not to Tiwanaku and instead just rest and recover and get over whatever she has. I was going to delay it a day but I have 2 days left here and I am a big believer in "Murphy's law" so decided to go ahead and book my tour for Tiwanaku for Thursday and get it over with.
Thursday morning the minibus picks me up at my place at 8:15am and we continue to pick up more people at their hotels until the bus is full. By 10am we are actually leaving La Paz since it takes 45 minutes just to get out of it. Tiwanaku is 73km west of La Paz and we get there around 11am. Not much is known about this society since they started around 600BC and seemed to have died out around 1200AD which is 250 years before the Incas arrived. I asked my guide why they choose this specific site to build the pyramid and all these other structures considering they could have built it anywhere and it didn't look like a very unique or special place but my guide told me that where we were use to be an island and that Lake Titicaca used to be bigger than it is now and stretched this far. I could hardly believe it since Lake Titicaca is huge already. My guide said around 900AD Lake Titicaca began to recede to where it is now. Where the Tiwanaku site is used to be a 6 square km island.
We all went into the museum and there were a couple stone structures. There was a well preserved one that stood over 7 meters high and weighed close to 20 tonnes! It had a calendar on it with 365 days etc... and other scriptions on it. There was a guard right there telling everyone that pulled out there camera that they were not allowed to take photos of it. I mean it is just stone with no paint or anything on it and I couldn't see the point of not letting people take photos of stone so as he went over to someone else with a camera to enforce the rules I took a quick shot of it. It was dark in the room with some lights below the statue so the photo didn't come out very good but I posted it and you can see the statue. I remember in Europe I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the "statue of David" in Florence or the "Mona lisa" in Paris but I got those photos anyhow haha.
Later we left the museum and went into the site where our guide gave us a brief history in english and spanish. There were some stone pillars with big holes in the middle which our guide demonstrated for us was an ancient loudspeaker as his voice echoed a little more as he spoke through them. We came to the "Gateway of the Sun" which was originally one solid piece but they found it broken in 2 pieces. I asked the guide what type of stone it is made of and he said "Andes stone" and I found that answer a little confusing but thought maybe he was saying the stone in spanish but a french woman spoke up and said "Yes it was found in the Andes but what "type" of stone is it?". He seemed a little confused and didn't know how to answer so I suggested "Is it granite?" and he said "Yes granite". I am sure if I said "Is it silly putty?" he would have said "Yes, it is silly putty".
There were a few statues on the site and a pyramid called "Akapana". When they found it it looked like a hill (and still does) but they excavated a few layers of it. There was a pit that had stone skulls and faces sticking out of it and one looked like an Alien which he suggested it might have been. There were women selling souvenirs outside and some were only $1US each so I bought a couple things and realized that some manufacturing company is making all these souvenirs at all these places in South America probably for 25 cents so people can sell them at tourist sites.
Later we jumped in the minibus which was now on the other side and went down a road which he said was made by the spanish conquistadores in order to haul the silver mined in Bolivia to Peru. As we drove down the spanish conquistadore road we stopped and saw another gateway called the "Gateway of the Moon". We drove over to the site of "Pumapunku" which has lots of the stone relics lying in a yard and not in their original position. After that we stopped at a restaurant which I knew probably had marked up lunch prices so our guide could get his tip. I declined because I wasn't hungry at all and said I would meet them in 45 minutes and just grabbed a pop by the museum.
It is always amazing to see these huge stones carved and moved to locations even though they weight tonnes in weight and we see it as a mystery on how they did it but there was a guy in Florida in the 1920's who was originally an immigrant from Estonia who found out the secret of how the ancients did all this but never revealed the secrets of nature that he had uncovered. His name was Ed Leedskalnin who secretly built the Coral Castle in Florida which is incredibly impressive and even moved his stone castle 10 miles in the 1930's when a subdivision was being built in his area. Anyone interested can visit these two links:
http://coralcastle.com/
Coral Castle images on Google
http://www.google.com.bo/search?q=coral+castle&hl=es-419&biw=1280&bih=612&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=W068Tof1PIiJgwea-YCyBw&ved=0CD8QsAQ
After that we headed back to La Paz. On the way into La Paz the minibus stopped at the same place I originally took that La Paz photo from when we came from Copacabana so I took some more photos from that location and posted them.
Just going to do some laundry today and Friday will be a pretty relaxed day as we explore a little more of La Paz and I will be getting a bus from La Paz to Arequipa Peru for Saturday.
Wednesday night I met up with John and Elisha for dinner at a Japanese restaurant in their hotel. It was good and we were the only ones in there and as we were eating the 3 women from New Zealand who we met on the hike on the "Isla de Sol" walked in and sat down (small world). We chatted briefly and John had his laptop down there and researched the biggest lakes in the world and found out Lake Titicaca is #18 in the world. Elisha wasn't feeling well and so they said they were going to take Thursday off and not to Tiwanaku and instead just rest and recover and get over whatever she has. I was going to delay it a day but I have 2 days left here and I am a big believer in "Murphy's law" so decided to go ahead and book my tour for Tiwanaku for Thursday and get it over with.
Thursday morning the minibus picks me up at my place at 8:15am and we continue to pick up more people at their hotels until the bus is full. By 10am we are actually leaving La Paz since it takes 45 minutes just to get out of it. Tiwanaku is 73km west of La Paz and we get there around 11am. Not much is known about this society since they started around 600BC and seemed to have died out around 1200AD which is 250 years before the Incas arrived. I asked my guide why they choose this specific site to build the pyramid and all these other structures considering they could have built it anywhere and it didn't look like a very unique or special place but my guide told me that where we were use to be an island and that Lake Titicaca used to be bigger than it is now and stretched this far. I could hardly believe it since Lake Titicaca is huge already. My guide said around 900AD Lake Titicaca began to recede to where it is now. Where the Tiwanaku site is used to be a 6 square km island.
We all went into the museum and there were a couple stone structures. There was a well preserved one that stood over 7 meters high and weighed close to 20 tonnes! It had a calendar on it with 365 days etc... and other scriptions on it. There was a guard right there telling everyone that pulled out there camera that they were not allowed to take photos of it. I mean it is just stone with no paint or anything on it and I couldn't see the point of not letting people take photos of stone so as he went over to someone else with a camera to enforce the rules I took a quick shot of it. It was dark in the room with some lights below the statue so the photo didn't come out very good but I posted it and you can see the statue. I remember in Europe I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the "statue of David" in Florence or the "Mona lisa" in Paris but I got those photos anyhow haha.
Later we left the museum and went into the site where our guide gave us a brief history in english and spanish. There were some stone pillars with big holes in the middle which our guide demonstrated for us was an ancient loudspeaker as his voice echoed a little more as he spoke through them. We came to the "Gateway of the Sun" which was originally one solid piece but they found it broken in 2 pieces. I asked the guide what type of stone it is made of and he said "Andes stone" and I found that answer a little confusing but thought maybe he was saying the stone in spanish but a french woman spoke up and said "Yes it was found in the Andes but what "type" of stone is it?". He seemed a little confused and didn't know how to answer so I suggested "Is it granite?" and he said "Yes granite". I am sure if I said "Is it silly putty?" he would have said "Yes, it is silly putty".
There were a few statues on the site and a pyramid called "Akapana". When they found it it looked like a hill (and still does) but they excavated a few layers of it. There was a pit that had stone skulls and faces sticking out of it and one looked like an Alien which he suggested it might have been. There were women selling souvenirs outside and some were only $1US each so I bought a couple things and realized that some manufacturing company is making all these souvenirs at all these places in South America probably for 25 cents so people can sell them at tourist sites.
Later we jumped in the minibus which was now on the other side and went down a road which he said was made by the spanish conquistadores in order to haul the silver mined in Bolivia to Peru. As we drove down the spanish conquistadore road we stopped and saw another gateway called the "Gateway of the Moon". We drove over to the site of "Pumapunku" which has lots of the stone relics lying in a yard and not in their original position. After that we stopped at a restaurant which I knew probably had marked up lunch prices so our guide could get his tip. I declined because I wasn't hungry at all and said I would meet them in 45 minutes and just grabbed a pop by the museum.
It is always amazing to see these huge stones carved and moved to locations even though they weight tonnes in weight and we see it as a mystery on how they did it but there was a guy in Florida in the 1920's who was originally an immigrant from Estonia who found out the secret of how the ancients did all this but never revealed the secrets of nature that he had uncovered. His name was Ed Leedskalnin who secretly built the Coral Castle in Florida which is incredibly impressive and even moved his stone castle 10 miles in the 1930's when a subdivision was being built in his area. Anyone interested can visit these two links:
http://coralcastle.com/
Coral Castle images on Google
http://www.google.com.bo/search?q=coral+castle&hl=es-419&biw=1280&bih=612&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=W068Tof1PIiJgwea-YCyBw&ved=0CD8QsAQ
After that we headed back to La Paz. On the way into La Paz the minibus stopped at the same place I originally took that La Paz photo from when we came from Copacabana so I took some more photos from that location and posted them.
Just going to do some laundry today and Friday will be a pretty relaxed day as we explore a little more of La Paz and I will be getting a bus from La Paz to Arequipa Peru for Saturday.
