The time I defied death at a BLISTERING 10 miles an hour.

My track record on bicycles is not stellar. Ever since my first attempt at flying, immediately following a certain front-brake locking incident, resulting in a slightly shortened right clavicle, I've had a bit of a phobia of the things. Which is why, as I sped downhill along the Yungas road to Coroico and the rest of the peloton of Aussies, Kiwis, English, Germans, and other tourists zipped by me, I was perfectly content to keep my hands on the brakes.

I'm hardly above making testosterone-fueled asinine decisions. That wisdom is still a few years off. But I know when I'm a fish out of water. And I think that's a good thing, particularly when a lack of guardrails on a single lane dirt road with 300 m vertical dropoffs are involved.

The Yungas road is considered to be the most dangerous road in the world. Constructed with a lot of TNT and some Paraguayan POW's in the 1930's, it's finally seen enough cars slip off its formidable edge to have convinced the Bolivian government to build an alternate, safer route. However, mountain biking the Yungas road to Coroico has become one of the most popular tourist attractions around the La Paz area. It's significantly safer on a bicycle than it used to be when it was the major route for all vehicles...but the abundant crosses and memorials that dot the edge of the cliff, the recent ones mostly results of mis-steps from cyclists, would humble the most valiant of riders.

I crawled along, hugging the opposite side from the abyss. Peeking over the edge, one can only ponder life and death...and remember Spanish pearls of wisdom:

El cemetario está lleno de valientes, y los pacificos echan cuentos.

The cemetary is full of heroes, and pacifists live on to tell the stories.

As the years go on, as the Democratic Republic of My Forehead persists in annexing the Wilderness of My Hair, I imagine my stories will slide in the direction of less credible, and this fish should get bigger along with the rest of them. Did I say 10 mph? I think it was more like 20...

Would you like potatoes or rice with your island?

The Uros people inhabit 40-some odd islands on Lake Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake. They also eat their islands.

Primarily for defensive purposes, the Uros people constructed islands out of totora reeds to avoid the invading Incas. At 2 meters thick, they are the world's largest water beds. The layers must be constantly replaced, and rot continuously off the bottom. Walking around on them, one's feet sink 6 inches at a time into the spongy surface. The islands are anchored to the bottom with ropes, but can easily be unattached and moved around. In addition to the "earth" below their feet, the totora reed is used to build their houses, boats, and watchtowers.

The totora reed happens to be an abundant supply of iodine and other nutrients, and so it can also be eaten. The Uros wrap the reed around wounds to absorb pain, duplicating some of the medical functions that the coca leaf resolves on the mainland.

Like any group of people, the Uros have feuding tendencies now and again, and so divisions between islands are somewhat visible to the casual observer. On the largest island, (and only the largest island), the roofs are all metal, a gift for converting from the 7th Day Adventist Church... ahem.

While explaining all of this, our guide produced a saw from one of the nearby houses. He explained to us that when the Hatfield/McCoy stuff really begins to hit the fan, people pick up their houses and float them to another island...or resort to more drastic measures. As he began to cut a small section of the island, he told us it was wise to get along with the community, as you could possibly wake up in the middle of the night with the wind whipping you around on YOUR OWN floating island in the middle of Lake Titicaca, the serrated edges leaving you only to ponder whose hammer you forgot to return punctually.

Colca Canyon

The Colca Canyon, just 4 hours outside of Arequipa, Peru. Surely you've heard of it. It does happen to be THE DEEPEST CANYON IN THE WORLD. As in more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. Yeah, I had never heard of it either.

In fact, I've begun to arrive at some other grim realizations about my ignorance. I'm not appreciating this trip nearly as much as I should. It's a bit like walking through the Vatican or Louvre. Yup, there's a masterpiece, there's a masterpiece, some guy spent his whole life to sculpt that, that's the largest canyon in the world, can I please get a beer over here? It's just impossible to keep up the stamina of awe and give everything the attention it deserves.

Oh yeah, and then I remember what working is like...and suddenly I appreciate the world's largest canyon again.

That's odd. Because when I'm working, I'll be thinking about walking to the bottom of this canyon to keep myself sane. And as I walk to the bottom of the world's largest canyon, I have to think about working to keep myself sane.

And suddenly I feel either incredibly wise, or incredibly stupid.

One other thing, photos. There are so many photos I wish I could take here. So many good portraits of Peruvian desert weathered faces, rosy cheeked children, Incan descendent features...but I can't bring myself to whip out my camera half the times I'd like to, to bother them or to expose myself as the tourist everyone already knows I am. So instead, I stop, breathe, watch, slip mental images into my sieve of a memory, and hope some of them don't slip out the other side.

I'll never get to be here again.

"Anlli llanchu, cochi wato" and other useless Quechua phrases learned on the Inca Trail

Anlli llanchu, cochi wato. That's how you say, "What's up, player/ladies' man/mujeriego" in Quechuan, the endemic language of Peru and principal tongue of the Incas. Why do I know this? Well, in my quest to become a polyglot, I figured French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian were far too logical follow-up idioms to Spanish...and decided to pester the Inca Trail guide and porters for useless Quechuan phrases. Our cook happened to be bragging about the 3 ex girlfriends he had recently separated with (a result of the young ladies having met one another), and our female guide was teasing him for being a cochi wato. So good, I have a basic greeting and an insult/compliment down. That should only leave about a billion Quechuan words to go.

Met up with old HS friend Tess, suffering a bad case of Boston-induced cabin fever to hike the 4-day/3-night Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. Spent a couple of days in Cuzco chewing on llama meat, getting used to the elevation and temperature change, and deliberating ordering the local delicacy, guinea pig. Never managed to get around to it, mostly because I have a moral and budgetary objection to spending $30 to eat a giant rat. That's right. I've started having morals. Call Guinness.

Wandered around the streets of Cuzco, staring at the 15th century stonework that still baffles anyone who has bothered to ponder what the Incas were all about. I'll tell you what they were all about: rocks. I'm not sure if it was Manco Inca or Ayatullah Inca or Pachacutec or any of the other billion names I came across, but someone at some point had to have said "Friends, Incans, Countrymen, WE are going to be all about ROCKS." I imagine one guy in the background holding a hammer, nails and wood, waving his arms frantically in the air saying "I've got an idea!" I bet he was sacrificed. Probably with a rock.

After spinning around a half dozen museums of mummified bodies, intentional skull deformations and surgeries, arrowheads and the lot, I hope I've retained any information about these people. Upon finishing 4 days of slogging through the Andean wilderness with jowls packed with coca leaves, Machu Picchu was, as expected, phenomenal...and I only had to spend like 15 minutes chasing a llama around to get the picture you see above. The one I took of the llama, not the one the llama took of me.

I have some doubts about the "history" presented to us on the tour. Seems like a lot of theories which are rigidly presented as fact about customs, none of which seem firmly set in *cough* stone. At any rate, witnessing the spectacle of Machu Picchu does provoke a lot of ideas that contrast nicely with post Peace Corps service, namely why the hell I had to pull teeth with rural people in 2007 to build simple water systems, and yet these people were able to build enormous cities 500 years ago, complete with water systems, and still no one is really sure how they even broke the rocks.

I was also significantly impressed with the mail system that brought fresh fish from the sea daily to the king, and could supposedly get a message from Cuzco to Quito, Ecuador in 5 days using runners in 2 km intervals. The same trip took me 36 consecutive hours on a bus and a 1 hour flight.

The Spaniards were never able to discover Machu Picchu, leaving many questions as to its relevance and final days. The bridge you see along the edge of the cliff is postulated to be the escape route from the holy city of Machu Picchu. It disappears into the wilderness on the edge of a cliff giving some mystery to where the final Incas to leave Machu Picchu may have gone.

The Andean wilderness is still being uncovered, revealing Incan ruins. If anyone wants to finance a quest over the next few mountain ranges to find the next set of ruins, I happen to be looking for a job.

Border Towns

I peel back my sweat-sealed eyelids as the bus screeches to a halt. The sun hasn't quite revealed itself, and since my bus seat doesn't recline, I haven't slept much for the past 12 hour ride. As I step off the bus, the vultures pounce. "My fren! My fren! Dis way...." My fists clentch, eyebrows furrow, and as I sling my bag over my shoulder, I venemously trill R's off my tongue as I ask a local where to get my weathered passport stamped. I trust no one here. Border towns are not places for making friends.

Lane and I hop on the back of two motorcycle "taxis", and we zip through the streets of Tumbes, Peru. Clutching onto the sides of the drivers and hoping our weighted bags don't tip our bikes, I chug on a bottle of OJ and watch the madness.

We split a market street at 40, oranges rolling off of fruit stands and bounding before our tires. Sleazy men offer to change counterfeit money, a drunk man sits on the corner and leans into his elbow. Children beg money for glue to sniff or for their parents' drug addictions and taxi drivers overcharge gringos like me. No one is friendly here, and I touch my wallet every 4 seconds. I am no longer pseudo-Panamanian. I am a tourist, and the vultures know it.

We step into the bus station, and buy our tickets for the next leg, a 24 hour ride bound for Lima. Bring on the Land of the Incas.