Museum and Lake Titicaca

This morning we headed off to Karola´s father´s house that is a museum of her grandfather Cecilio Guzman de Rojas in La Paz.

He gave us a full tour of the works of art, and even allowed to take pictures of them.

The house was very ornate with a lot of hand carved wood. We then discussed the stories behind Cecilio Guzman de Rojas´ life while we had salteñas.

He also showed us work that he has done on computers, and the program www.Atamiri.cc. It allows you to talk to people in other languages because it translates the language that you write into the language that they write. It was very interesting and educational morning.

Karola´s mother, Ulla, then met up with us to head to Lake Titicaca. It was about a 1.5 hour drive. We arrived at a hotel on the water, Hotel Inca Utama. We went in and ordered trout, which we have all decided strongly resembles our salmon, but tastes better.

We toured one of the museums on the property that had a lot of ancient medicinal techniques including the usage of different herbs and rituals in the Bolivian culture.

The last room in the museum was a small stage used for offerings and coca leaf readings. There was a Callawalla who is also a Yatiri, which means that he is an herb healing doctor and also uses coca leaves to read the future. He told some of our fortunes using coca leaves which was very interesting to watch and observe. We then continued our tour around the complex which a lot of us compared to the Plimouth Plantation of Lake Titicaca, because they were indigenous people who were still practicing their weaving and boat making skills out of reeds.

The area was a replica of an traditional Incan lake village. While we were wandering the area, a thunderstorm rolled in, but luckily, we got in the cars fast enough to head away from the storm.

Afterwards we continued down the road for some more scenic shots and ended up in an area of the lake where we could see a small town in Peru. The lake was absolutely beautiful.

We then headed home to have dinner, catch up on emails, the blog, and rest as many of us are still recovering from our trip to Uyuni.

Hasta Manaña!!!