Remember those first days of school when our teachers would ask us to write about what we did over summer vacation? Remember the pictures we'd draw and the adventures we'd write about? Did anyone ever ask their teachers what they did over their summer vacations? 

I finally got that chance and interviewed Rebecca Kramer, one of our Ross Valley School District teachers, who spent her summer vacation traveling through South America, exploring Bolivia and Peru with lifelong friends. Kramer can now check off two of her "Must Do" experiences: hiking the Inca Trail and exploring Machu Picchu. And she got to add unexpected adventures and wonders, too!

The trip began in Bolivia where Kramer, with two friends, spent a few days in La Paz walking up and down the Witches Market. In addition to the usual sweaters and colorful hats, she and her friends found dried llama fetuses being sold to locals to be buried under one's house for good luck and coca leaves being sold by the baggie.

A favorite past time for Kramer is people-watching, and she delighted in observing "the babies' cheeks and how they were huge and round and rosy and were found all over peeking out of the colorful cloth they sat in on their mothers' backs. The women wore bowler hats, propped high on top of their head, and their skirts were huge, due to the layers, which resulted in a mushroom effect for their bodies. They draped neutral colored shawls around their arms and wore their hair in long black braids. The men wore modern clothes in the city, but many were found sporting the famous colorful beanie with long ear flaps on the sides."

After leaving La Paz, Kramer and her travelmates headed toward Peru with a stop at Copacabana. No, not the Copacabana of Barry Manilow's hit song from 1978, but a small town that sits on the edge of Lake Titicaca an incredible place full of beauty and history. According to Incan legend the Sun was created here and it is the birthplace of the first Incas. 

Traveling across the border and into Peru, they dropped their bags at a hostel owned by a man who happened to have been on the same bus to the large town of Puno. Almost immediately upon their arrival this helpful gentleman arranged for them to spend the day visiting the floating islands. The floating islands are a series of islands made of reeds by the local Uros population. Though, Kramer said, the tour was "touristy," she still found it fascinating, as the islands move under your feet while walking and was happy to be a tourist here.

After Puno, they took a fairly pricey (but worth it) bus called Inca Express, which stopped at a number of important and interesting sites along the route to Cusco. From the comfortable seats, Kramer took in the stunning views of craggy mountains shouldering pockets of snow and adobe houses surrounded by long, yellow, stringy grasses. They visited various Incan ruins, museums, churches and towns and arrived that night in Cusco to find what turned out to be her the best yet: Pariwana.

When you travel as much as Kramer you come to know what to expect from a hostel, but this one "blew all of us out of the water." 

The beds were the most comfortable she'd ever slept on, made more comfortable when draped with fluffy, warm duvets. (It was our summer which, as we all know, means winter for the other side of the equator and it was cold, cold, cold!) The showers were hot and the water pressure perfect, which can be rare for a hostel. The staff was accommodating and in each locker there was an outlet to charge electronic devices. The best part was that all of this went for just $10 a night!

Kramer and her friends arrived in Cusco, the Incan capital of Peru, just before its biggest celebration of the year: Inti Raymi. Inti Raymi is a festival for the Sun God, where people reenact the Sun God ceremonies of the Incans. On the first day of the festival, there was a parade full of people dressed in traditional clothing from each region in Peru. On the second day, they climbed high above the city to watch the actual Inti Raymi reenactment, which happens in an ancient ruin. They were only slightly disappointed that the llama sacrifice was not real and that instead the llama looked around while the actors were supposedly taking out his "organs." 

Onward they traveled to the main focus of the adventure: the Inca Trail and Macchu Picchu. At this point, Kramer met up with 15 friends, 11 of them teachers, for a journey they had started planning almost a year before. They hired two wonderful guides, Cesar as their main guide and his sidekick, Augusto. The trek package also came with porters. The ancient Incas once had runners who acted as messengers between all of the important Incan cities, and the porters were clearly the descendents of these incredible men. Kramer and her friends has to gasp for almost every breath, while carrying only their small backpacks up the trail, but porter after porter easily and swiftly passed while carrying tents, cooking supplies, food, sleeping bags, and everything for camp on their backs. Every night, when the group reached the campsite, the porters had already set up tents and had food ready. And, to top it off, they always greeted everyone with applause when they made it into camp. 

The Inca Trail was once used only by the elite who went to Machu Picchu, such as priests and priestesses, astronomers, and professors. This was a sacred journey to get to the most sacred of all Incan civilizations. Kramer was amazed to walk in the footsteps of these ancient people, knowing that her experience was similar to those thousands of years ago. With every step the views only got better, snowy peaked mountains, green grassy valleys, interesting flora, and amazing Incan caves. 

When they reached the top, after three days of hiking in beautiful clear weather, the rains and fogs and nearly cost them the incredible view that Machu Picchu has to offer, but they waited out the day, which paid off in full. In the late afternoon, the skies cleared, the sun finally shined brightly on what they had come all that way for. Kramer and her friends took at least 1,000 photos between them and have the memories etched forever in their minds.

Several harrowing bus rides lasting for days brought them back to Bolivia where they recouped and spent three days in Uyuni. The major attraction is the Salar de Uyuni, a huge slat flat which, thousands of years ago, was a salt lake. The lake has since dried up and all that is left is white for as far as the eye can see. 

All throughout the deserts, they discovered every shade of brown you can imagine, unbelievably tall cacti, volcanic rocks in crazy shapes, and lagoon after lagoon in varying shades of blues and greens and even reds all acting as perfect contrasts to the brown landscape and bright blue sky. There were flamingos one day, bubbling mud and geysers the next, and one night, the coldest night at nearly 5000 meters, they saw the Milky Way in all her glory. On the last day of this part of the adventure they were brought to a lagoon that was overlooked by mountains and volcanoes from Argentina, Chile and Bolivia. 

Suddenly it was time to head home, but Kramer just had to get a little more adventure in and capped it off with a road trip with a friend from Guatemala City to Belize. There they enjoyed a restful week on the beach before heading back to Marin. 

What are Kramer's next adventure plans? She will be going back to Guatemala to celebrate Christmas and New Years with her close friend. Next summer vacation, she hopes to have more stories about a trip to Africa, maybe including Kenya or Egypt or both!

Rebecca Kramer currently teaches in the Ross Valley School District. She grew up in Mill Valley, graduated from Tam High in 2001, and got her teaching credential and bachelor's degree from Dominican University. She has traveled extensively in Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Ireland, England, and Norway. She has done an incredible amount of volunteer work, including time with Amigos de las Americas, Save the Children, CARE and Amor. She most recently spent two years in Guatemala teaching second grade at an International school called Colegio Interamericano in Guatemala City.