Machu Picchu: Just a pile of rocks

Dana's heading to Peru and Bolivia this summer for a semester of intensive Spanish language study. She and the other students from her college will live with Peruvian families in Lima and Cusco. The kids will spend four hours a day in class, but there will also be plenty of sightseeing. Machu Picchu, is, of course, on the list.

Most travelers set out for Machu Picchu from Cusco, a chocolate-brown city where Spanish colonial architecture sits atop ancient walls built by the Inca. Cusco is in the foothills of the Andes at about 11,000 feet, an altitude that creates oxygen deprivation problems for visitors who don't or can't take enough time to safely and gradually acclimate. I trust that the folks running Dana's university program will ensure that the students go slowly their first few days in Cusco and that their day trip to Machu Picchu is scheduled for the back rather than the front end of their Cusco stay.

Otherwise, somebody's bound to miss Machu Picchu. Somebody will be decked by altitude sickness, or soroche, and the excrutiatingly painful headache that is arguably its least pleasant and most frightening symptom. I've experienced brain-beating soroche in both Cusco and Lhasa, Tibet and a milder version in Quito, Ecuador. When your head feels like a crazed, invisible hand is attacking it with a hacksaw, sightseeing, even to one of the world's major wonders, is out of the question.

Mike and I went to Peru on a package tour that spent three days in Cusco. Luckily for me, the Machu Picchu excursion fell on the third day, by which time my soroche had passed. Each successive Cusco day brought a visit to increasingly spectacular Inca ruins. My Day One misery kept me in bed at the Holiday Inn while my tripmates visited Ollantaytambo, which I will always regret having missed, but by Day Two I felt human enough to join the tour of spectacular Sacsayhuaman, spread across a hillside overlooking the city. By Machu Picchu day, my head didn't hurt one bit -- although my stomach was nauseated and roiling from the juice of all the coca leaves I'd chewed to help dull my headache. Mike had bought me a giant plastic bag of coca leaves from a sidewalk vendor. Both natives and tourists chew the stuff all day.
One member of our tour group -- I think his name was Ed, so I'll call him Ed -- wasn't as lucky as me. Ed's soroche seized him on arrival in Cusco and didn't let go until the morning of our departure on Day Four. Ed missed Ollantaytambo, Sacsayhuaman, the rich sights of Cusco itself. And Ed missed Machu Picchu.

Early in the morning on Machu Picchu day, the day that was everyone's raison d'etre for traveling to Peru in the first place, we unafflicted tourists gathered in the Holiday Inn lobby bubbling with anticipation and excitement. The tour leader did a head count: one shy. Sadly, Ed was evidently still abed.

Then he appeared. Ed hobbled down the stairs, entered the lobby, sat in a straight-backed wooden chair, leaned his head against the wall, and began to cry. Some of us cried, too. Then we left without him.

Machu Picchu was spectacular beyond description. To see it, stand in it, revel in the knife-like, velvet-green peaks that surround it is a powerful, enduring experience.
But the glory of the experience was tempered by the knowledge that Ed, who, like us, had traveled a quarter of the globe expressly to stand in this remarkable place, wasn't there.

When we got back to the Holiday Inn, Ed was in the lobby, in the straight-backed chair, and his sad, expectant face knocked any residual joy out of us. An unspoken pact united everyone in the group. When Ed asked, "How was it?" we made our faces long and mumbled, "It was OK" and quickly dispersed to our respective rooms.

We didn't speak of Machu Picchu for the remainder of the trip.

www.LoriHein.com

The Ultimate Bird Lover

My story, "The Universal Language of Pigeon," has just been published in a new anthology by HCI Books. The Ultimate Bird Lover hits bookshelves, real and virtual, on February 1st.

My bird story is, of course, a travel story:

Arming your kids with corn and sending them into a flock of pigeons is a surefire way to connect with locals when you travel. Pigeons swoop, crowds gather, international relations ensue. You may not speak the locals’ language, but if they’ve got pigeons and you’ve got kids, you’ve got a lingua franca. Some of my family’s favorite travel memories involve pigeons. In cities all over the world we’ve used the birds to make connections with people.

Like the bevy of Italian models who interrupted a photo shoot in Venice’s Piazza San Marco to marvel at my then nine-year-old son, Adam, who, by throwing the corn straight up but not out, made the top of his head the site of multiple pigeon landings. The models called him “PEE-jin boy” and took pictures before giving him corn-throwing advice. Italians speak with their hands, and it was interesting to watch a half-dozen drop-dead gorgeous women mime effective grain-tossing techniques to a little boy. Nearby, our daughter, Dana, then six and already a skilled animal whisperer, had attracted her own fans. She laid a trail of corn and, by repeatedly cooing, “Yo, whitey, my man,” coaxed San Marco’s sole albino pigeon to walk a straight line, pecking each piece as he went, right into her hands.

The summer before he started school I took Adam to Bolivia. He liked the boat ride across Lake Titicaca and thought “Andy’s mountains” were cool. But what he most enjoyed was just hanging out in the capital, La Paz. He liked having his shoes shined by teenage boys who nodded earnestly while he explained the powers of the action figures he carried in his pockets, and he liked eating cotton candy in Plaza Murillo, a popular public space and heart of the city.

One sunny Sunday in the plaza, anchored by grand government buildings and a neo-classical cathedral, Adam spied a boy about his age sitting on a bench with his parents watching the pigeons gathered in the center of the square. We knew what to do.

I bought seven bags of corn from a vendor, gave Adam one, and sent him into the flock. He threw a handful into the air and the pigeons went loco, whirling to get the grain. As they swarmed around Adam’s feet, the little boy stood up and clapped. I called Adam over and gave him two bags of corn. He went to the boy and offered him one. Then they ventured, the little American in a Pokemon windbreaker and the little Bolivian in a sweatsuit of red, yellow and green, the colors of the Bolivian flag, into the middle of the plaza, where they threw corn, dodged dive-bombing pigeons and laughed together from the bottom of their bellies.

After four more bags of corn had been happily tossed and consumed, the boy ran to his parents’ bench and returned to Adam with a soccer ball. The parents motioned to me to join them and asked if Adam could play for a while.

While the new friends kicked the ball for an hour, the parents and I, mixing simple Spanish and English, talked about life in our respective countries and about the joys and challenges of raising a family. There was little difference between their experiences and hopes and my own.

And, looking at our sons, running and grinning and enjoying the day and each other, we knew there wasn’t much difference between them, either.



www.LoriHein.com

Good luck charms: Washington's nose and llama fetuses

With luck, I'll be running the Boston Marathon in April. It's not so much the marathon I need luck for, rather surviving training and staying injury-free. I try to keep the level of limb-pounding abuse low enough to keep me out of the physical therapist's office and let me show up at the starting line but high enough not to send my body into shock as I work toward the finish line. It's always a bit of a balancing act, and when I find something that works, I put it into my permanent bag of training tricks.

About four marathons ago I adopted a ritual to bring me luck. Between the first day of training and the last I must find at least 26 cents, heads up, while out on a run. Coins found any other time don't count, nor does face-down currency (which I'm allowed to pick up and toss back down and hope I find it, face-up, on my next run). If I find 26 good luck cents, I take that as a sign that I will make it to the start and I will complete the 26 miles.

Sometimes I find much more than 26 cents over my four months of training -- I once found a face-up dollar bill -- and sometimes I just squeak by, finding my last needed penny a few days before the race. Once, while out on an 18-miler, I found a heads-up quarter and a heads-up penny within a few feet of each other. Talk about your good omens! I carried those coins in my fuel belt on race day, felt awesome, turned in my best marathon performance, finished fourth in my age group, and qualified for Boston. Superstition works for me.



Today was Day 24 of my Boston training schedule, and it was a lucky day indeed. My run was nothing to write home about; it was cold, I was slow, I had to dodge more than the usual number of texting drivers, and I couldn't stop thinking about places I'd rather be, like in a Jacuzzi. But then I saw, poking through some muddy snow, a battered, quarter-size disc. I picked it up, spit on it, and after some rubbing made out George Washington's prominent probiscus in profile. Eureka! Not even a month down, and all I need to find between now and mid-April is one penny. I'm thinking God's trying to tell me something good, like, You're gettin' old girl, but you've got a few more in you.

My coin thing may sound weird, but it's tame compared to some good luck traditions practiced around the world. Like in Bolivia, where dried llama fetus is a popular talisman.

I was in La Paz, Bolivia's capital, and I climbed up steep Calle Sagarnaga to Calle Linares, known as Witches' Street, where “witches” in wide, bell-shaped taffeta skirts and bowler hats sit at stalls and try to tempt superstitious customers with sacks of amulets to repel evil and bring good fortune. The witches had stacks of neon-colored soaps; candles shaped like stars, birds and alpacas; soapstone figurines of Inca gods; unlabeled, tar-sealed bottles of homemade aphrodisiacs. And heaps of deep brown, dried llama fetuses that looked like the skeletons of giant, prehistoric birds.



The witches explained that nearly every Bolivian family buries a llama fetus, a sullu, under its house, often at the threshold, to keep evil from entering. Workers at Bolivian construction projects want assurance that a llama fetus, complete with a witch’s or soothsayer’s blessing, has been buried at the site before the men will pick up their tools.

I watched a vendor wrap a fetus for a Bolivian customer. She blessed the sullu, laid it on a cloth atop a pile of bark and plant material, and tied a thick strand of dyed, multicolor llama wool around its thin, brittle neck. The customer bowed slightly before picking up his precious package of good luck insurance.

Hmmm... I wonder if I could attach a llama fetus to my fuel belt...



www.LoriHein.com

Bolivia: Copacabana popcorn

After visiting the Island of the Sun, legendary birthplace of Inca civilization, Adam and I continued by boat across Lake Titicaca to Copacabana, Bolivia. The Cordillera Real, a spine of 20,000-foot Andean peaks that includes the giants Ancohuma and Illampu, rose in its vast whiteness from the opposite lakeshore.

Meanwhile, in Copacabana, vast whiteness of a different kind: popcorn.

An entire street near the town's central square and basilica was lined with popcorn ladies selling their white wares from tables set under makeshift awnings.

Each popcorn seller commanded a monstrous mound of the crackly kernel, and almost all the ladies' inventories were cradled inside crisp, baby blue bedsheets knotted on three sides. Colored plastic bags filled with corn sat atop the mounds, ready to go.
For about 30 cents, I bought Adam a bag that was, at the time, almost as big as he was (and took five days to eat).

There's no way, I thought, as we left Popcorn Street, that those ladies sell all that popcorn in the course of a day. Which made me imagine this scene: 20 popcorn sellers packing up at dusk, tying their blue bedsheets tight around their product, and filing in a quiet line out of town, humping the popcorn up into the hills to their homes.

And in the morning, humping it back down.

www.LoriHein.com

Chacaltaya: Climate change closes world's highest ski area

In this month’s National Geographic Tim Appenzeller writes about global warming and its appetite for Earth’s glaciers.

Icefields from Montana to Greenland to the Alps are disappearing faster than scientists and climatologists thought possible just a decade ago. The meltdown changes lives and landscapes, threatens creatures like the polar bear and beluga whale, and simultaneously brings more water in the form of higher sea levels to areas that don’t need it and less water in the form of annual potable glacial melt to areas that do. Himalayan ice disappears; Bangladesh sinks; India loses the reliable, life-giving pulse of the Ganges.

Appenzeller opens his article with Chacaltaya, a 17,250-foot peak that rises from the burnt-brown dust of the Bolivian altiplano. Chacaltaya has been the world's highest serviced ski area since 1939 when a rope tow began taking skiers to the top of Chacaltaya Glacier.

But Chacaltaya Glacier is now a few blotches of rock-strewn snow. Writes Appenzeller, “...in the past decade, it’s gone into a death spiral... By last year all that remained were three patches of gritty ice, the largest just a couple of hundred yards across. The rope tow traversed boulder fields... Chacaltaya is history.”

Some years ago, Adam and I rode from La Paz, Bolivia to Lake Titicaca in a Crillon Tours van and looked on Chacaltaya sitting big above the high, dry plain that is the Bolivian altiplano.

Mario, our driver, was a silent, wizened road warrior who’d been carting tourists across the high plain so long that he was able to negotiate through the roiling clouds of Altiplano dust that blanketed the windshield. We often couldn’t make out the road for the swirling dirt and dust, but Mario, through some innate or cultivated skill set, kept rubber to pavement.

Our guide was Federico, a young doctor who’d just finished his internship. He was trying to qualify for a residency program in Germany and moonlighted at Crillon Tours to earn extra money for his anticipated air ticket to Frankfurt.

For two hours, Mario, Federico, Adam and I drove parallel to the Cordillera Real (photo), a nearly nonstop string of regal, white-cloaked Andes that stretch from Bolivia's capital into Peru. From grand Illimani that looms over La Paz to even grander Illampu near Lake Titicaca, the ride was a visual feast of some of the world’s greatest peaks.

But one peak looked barren. Chacaltaya was mostly stark brown in comparison to its brilliant, higher, snow-draped neighbors. I’d read about Chacaltaya and its claim to fame as the world’s highest developed ski area, so I was surprised to see it rough and rocky. At 17,000 feet in a Bolivian winter, there should have been snow and ice – and a ski run.

I asked Federico about the mountain.

“Every mountain is an abuelo – a grandfather – and a great spirit,” he said softly. “When a mountain loses its snow, it is cause for much concern. We say that the grandfather is taking off his poncho.”

When an abuelo takes off his poncho, Federico explained, Bolivians believe the grandfather is preparing to act in some way that will affect the lives of those who live near the mountain. Federico said Chacaltaya had been slowly taking off his poncho for several years.

A recent photo of Chacaltaya accompanied Appenzeller’s National Geographic article.

The grandfather is bare. He has no poncho. Cause, as Federico said, for much concern.


www.LoriHein.com

The witches of La Paz

La Paz, Bolivia's Witches' Market -- el Mercado de las Brujas -- is the place to head for some Halloween decorations that will one-up anything the neighbors might put in their yards. Let them have their fake cobwebs and molded plastic gravestones. You, my friend, can scare the pants off the trick or treaters with your collection of dead altiplano animals...

From the Plaza San Francisco and its massive colonial cathedral, I headed up La Paz's steep Calle Sagarnaga and found Calle Linares, where “witches” in wide, bell-shaped taffeta skirts and bowler hats sat at stalls and tried to entice me into buying sacks of amulets and talismans to repel evil and attract good fortune.

Piles and stacks of neon-colored soaps and candles shaped like stars, birds and alpacas; soapstone figurines of Inca gods and goddesses; unlabeled bottles of homemade aphrodisiacs.

And heaps of deep brown, dried llama fetuses that looked like the skeletons of giant, prehistoric birds.

The witches explained that nearly every Bolivian household buries a llama fetus, a sullu, under its house, often at the threshold, to keep evil from entering and taking up residence. Workers at Bolivian construction projects want assurance that a llama fetus, complete with a witch’s or soothsayer’s blessing, has been buried at the site before the men will pick up their tools. I watched a vendor wrap a fetus for a Bolivian customer. She blessed the sullu, laid it on a cloth atop a pile of bark and plant material, and tied a thick strand of dyed llama wool around its thin, brittle neck.

I asked permission to photograph the fetuses. The vendor, switching from witch to businesswoman mode, made me a deal. I could photograph anything at her stall and her neighbor’s provided I bought something from each of them.

I thought I might have some trouble with the customs agents when I reentered the U.S. at Miami if I were toting a bundle of South American llama DNA, so I opted for a fetching stone carving of Pacha Mama, Mother Earth. Before handing Mama to me, my witch blessed a magenta and cobalt cord of twisted wool and tied it around the statue’s neck. The yarn enhances the figurine’s power to bring me luck, and I will never remove it.

I shot half a roll of Fujichrome, then moved to the next stall to finish it off. As payment, I purchased a small glass bottle, sealed with tar and tin. Inside swam bits of brightly colored plant parts and snail shells -- and a tiny, rusted charm depicting the Virgin Mary. My witches had covered all the bases.


www.LoriHein.com

Copacabana: The Virgin, the pope and the popcorn ladies

A recent item in the Los Angeles Times reported that $30 of raw popcorn can generate $3,000 in sales at a movie theater concession stand. The Bolivian women selling popcorn outside the cathedral in Copacabana on Lake Titicaca don’t enjoy a thousand percent profit margin, but when the plaza that fronts the cathedral fills with campesinos who come for blessings on their cars and trucks, the popcorn ladies can move more than a few bags of the white stuff.

I bought Adam a red plastic bag of it. Big as his torso. We sat down by the cathedral to people-watch. I scooped a handful of popcorn and discovered it was coated in sugar. I was on vacation, so I kept eating.

Some two dozen members of an extended family, covered in streamers and confetti, sat on the sidewalk outside the cathedral gate near their brand new van, bedecked from bumper to bumper with crepe paper flowers. One of the family’s men stood in front of the van and faced the cathedral. Head bowed and hands clasped in prayer, he asked the Virgin of Copacabana to bless the vehicle and those who would travel in it. While Bolivia’s indians practice the Catholicism brought by Spanish priests and conquistadores, they keep all their bases covered and pepper their Christianity with ancient Aymara traditions and beliefs. So, while one man prayed, the rest of the family ate, imbibed and drizzled drink onto the pavement to honor Pacha Mama – Mother Earth. The offering would help ensure safe journeys in the van and good mechanical karma under its hood.

Inside the cathedral, the Virgin of Copacabana (also known as the Virgen de la Candelaria) reigns. She is the mistress of Lake Titicaca. Copacabana’s population is some 4,000. But on the Virgin's Feast Day in August, over 50,000 people from Peru and Bolivia come to Copacabana to worship her.

She stands, four feet high, inside a niche above the 400-year-old cathedral’s audacious, breathtaking gold and silver altar. But her back is to you. For good luck. (To see her face, you visit a small chapel tucked behind the altar.)

To preserve peace and good fortune in Copacabana, indian lore dictates two things: the Virgin must face Lake Titicaca, and she cannot be moved. The church’s altar faces away from the lake, so the Virgin looks out, not in. Only on weekends and feast days, when the sanctuary is filled with pious pilgrims, do church elders dare turn her around for mass. Service over, before anything bad happens, they spin her quickly back lakeward.

The "cannot be moved" dictate (other than those mass day spins) is immovable, even when the Church's big cheese suggests bending the rules. Years ago, Pope John Paul II visited Bolivia and wanted to see the Copacabana Virgin. He asked that she be taken to the capital, La Paz, where he was staying. Copacabana's religious officials were faced with a no-win situation: on the one hand, the sacred, permanently-rooted Virgin and the fate of the city. On the other, an impossible request from the Holy See’s big boss.

Their flocks saved the Catholic fathers from having to make a messy decision. Campesinos by the thousands descended on Copacabana and surrounded the cathedral. They said "no" to moving the Virgin to La Paz. Church officials took the people’s "no" to John Paul. The pontiff took it in stride, and the Virgin stayed put.

The guy was cool. He probably said, "Never mind. How about some popcorn? And pour some sugar over it, like they do in Copacabana."

Boo from Bolivia: Spooktacular souvenirs at the Witches' Market

To find some truly ghoulish Halloween decorations – stuff that none of the neighbors have and will scare the face paint off the trick-or-treaters – head to the Witches’ Market (Mercado de las Brujas) in La Paz, Bolivia and pick up a few dried llama fetuses.

From the Plaza San Francisco and its massive colonial cathedral, I headed up steep Calle Sagarnaga and found Calle Linares, where “witches” in wide, bell-shaped taffeta skirts and bowler hats sat at stalls and tried to entice me into buying sacks of amulets and talismans to repel evil and attract good fortune.

Piles and stacks of neon-colored soaps and candles shaped like stars, birds and alpacas; soapstone figurines of Inca gods and goddesses; unlabeled bottles of homemade aphrodisiacs.

And heaps of deep brown, dried llama fetuses that looked like the skeletons of giant, prehistoric birds.

The witches explained that nearly every Bolivian household buries a llama fetus, a sullu, under its house, often at the threshold, to keep evil from entering and taking up residence. Workers at Bolivian construction projects want assurance that a llama fetus, complete with a witch’s or soothsayer’s blessing, has been buried at the site before the men will pick up their tools. I watched a vendor wrap a fetus for a Bolivian customer. She blessed the sullu, laid it on a cloth atop a pile of bark and plant material, and tied a thick strand of dyed llama wool around its thin, brittle neck.

I asked permission to photograph the fetuses. The vendor, switching from witch to businesswoman mode, made me a deal. I could photograph anything at her stall and her neighbor’s provided I bought something from each of them.

I thought I might have some trouble with the customs agents when I reentered the U.S. at Miami if I were toting a bundle of South American llama DNA, so I opted for a fetching stone carving of Pacha Mama, Mother Earth. Before handing Mama to me, my witch blessed a magenta and cobalt cord of twisted wool and tied it around the statue’s neck. The yarn enhances the figurine’s power to bring me luck, and I will never remove it.

I shot half a roll of Fujichrome, then moved to the next stall to finish it off. As payment, I purchased a small glass bottle, sealed with tar and tin. Inside swam bits of brightly colored plant parts and snail shells -- and a tiny, rusted charm depicting the Virgin Mary. My witches had covered all the bases.


www.LoriHein.com

Kilimanjaro takes off his poncho

In March, Reuters distributed an article about a London meeting of the world’s biggest polluters. Ministers and leaders gathered to discuss the imperative to reduce carbon emissions. (The US was represented, but, as far as this American can tell, emerged thinking Kyoto Agreement means little more than acting civil while in a lovely Japanese city north of Osaka.)

To spur the ministers to outrage and action, photos were shown of a bald Mt. Kilimanjaro, evident victim of global warming. Kili, 19,340 feet at the tip of Kibo, the tallest of its three summits, sits in Tanzania near the Kenyan border. The highest peak in Africa and one of the world’s highest freestanding mountains, Kili has, for ages, been a symbol of wonder, elusiveness, striving and a source of inspiration and strength. I wrote a story about Tim Saunders, a Massachusetts man who climbed Kili in 2003. “If God lived on earth,” Saunders told me, “I imagine this is what His place would look like.”

His place looks different now. The snows of Kilimanjaro – Kilima Njaro or “shining mountain” in Swahili – are almost gone. The photo above, taken a few years ago, is the best I could get from Kili. Covered in clouds during most of our visit to Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, the legendary snowcap seemed small and vulnerable whenever it showed itself.

When I read the Reuters article and considered the now nearly snowless Kilimanjaro, my mind flashed back to a van ride across the Bolivian Altiplano.

Adam and I were on our way to Lake Titicaca with Mario, a wizened old driver able to see through roiling clouds of Altiplano dust, and our guide, Federico, a young doctor who had just finished his internship and was trying to qualify for a residency program in Germany. He moonlighted with La Paz’ Crillon Tours to earn extra money for that hoped-for air ticket to Frankfurt.

For two hours, we drove up close and parallel to the Cordillera Real, a string of Andes that blew my mind. From Illimani that looms over La Paz to Illampu near Lake Titicaca, the ride was a nonstop visual feast of some of the world’s grandest peaks.

One looked barren. Chacaltaya was mostly stark brown in comparison to its brilliant, snow-draped neighbors. There might have been more snow on the side I couldn’t see, but Chacaltaya, site of the world’s highest developed ski area, looked rough and rocky. When I suggested to Federico that perhaps the mountain was mad at people for skiing on him, Federico looked at me as if I’d opened a door he never expected me to be able to unlock.

“Every mountain is an abuelo – a grandfather – and a great spirit,” he said softly. “When a mountain loses its snow, it is cause for much concern. We say that the grandfather is taking off his poncho.” When an abuelo takes off his poncho, Bolivians believe the grandfather is preparing to act in some way that will affect the lives of those who live near the mountain. Federico said Chacaltaya had been slowly taking off his poncho for five years.

Kilimanjaro is taking off his poncho. Is he telling us he’s angry at how we treat our world? Kili and Chacaltaya stand on different continents an ocean apart, but the indigenous people who live under both recognize them as elders to be honored, earthforms with spirits. Perhaps the two grandfathers talk to one another, wondering whether mankind will heed the message sent each time another abuelo begins to take off his poncho.

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Four travel favorites: Lakes

It came to me while I was running...how to share glimpses of lots of great places in the the short space of a blog post: a list. With FOUR TRAVEL FAVORITES, I’ll share four of my favorite fill in the blank (exotic places, museums, bridges, mountains, islands, man-made wonders, natural wonders, scenic drives, seaside towns, buildings, ruins, castles, rivers, cities of various sizes...tell me what you want to see LHein10257@aol.com).

Let’s start with lakes:

• Moraine Lake, Alberta, Canada – Alberta’s glacial lakes sit like aquamarine jewels cradled in magnificent Rocky Mountain settings. Base yourself in Banff or Jasper and drive the Icefields Parkway between them, detouring to take in the necklace of stunningly-colored lakes. Moraine is close to Lake Louise, another mountain-ringed eyepopper. Just off the Parkway, take in the arresting beauty of Peyto Lake. It’s a color you’ve never seen before.
• Lake Titicaca, Bolivia – Earth’s highest navigable lake sits between Peru and Bolivia, and you can access the lake from either. From the lakefront Inca Utama Hotel in Huatajata, Bolivia, take a hydrofoil trip on the 12,500-foot lake to the Island of the Sun, peppered with agricultural terraces built by the Incas, many still under cultivation. Stand on the island’s pebble beach and face the towering massif of the Andes’ Cordillera Real, which towers above Titicaca’s eastern shore.
• Lake Como, Italy – La dolce vita doesn’t get any sweeter than this. Go in summer, pick a lakeside town like Cadenabbia, Bellagio, Tremezzo, Varenna or Menaggio to base yourself in, and enjoy the sweetness of doing nothing—dolce far niente. Nothing but soaking up sun, drinking brilliant local wines, eating food so fresh it bursts in your mouth, and watching sunlight and moonlight play on water, green mountains and rainbow-colored buildings.
• Lake Lucerne, Switzerland – Called Vierwaldstatter See, Lake of the Four Forest Cantons in German, Lake Lucerne is a high-altitude beauty ringed by Alps, plied by inter-canton ferries and lined with pristine Swiss towns. Base yourself in Lucerne, and take in the medieval walls, watchtowers and painted covered bridge that juts out into the lake. Mounts Pilatus and Rigi kiss the clouds above you. (Yes, there’s a pattern here. I like my lakes served with a side order of mountain grandeur.)
  
  Travel to stunning American places in Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America