Long way to go

I am in Potosi, wayyy up in the mountains, at about 4000 meters. I am doing much better with the altitude sickness though, taking sorojchi pills. (This is where I apologize for not providing more links; along with bad punctuation, it´s a byproduct of a foreign keyboard.) It´s raining right now, pretty sweet to watch the storm come in and thunder rip through the mountains.

Potosi, Bolivia, used to be a very wealthy town because of all the silver mines and old mints that were here. These days it is less prosperous, but more than eighty percent of the population still works in the mines.

This morning I took a tour of a silver mine, which turned out to be a lot more intense than I expected it to be. I felt a little strange, suiting up for education and entertainment alongside miners who do this their whole lives - most start around age 12. The tour was a lot more physical than I expected, lots of climbing up tiny shafts and crawling on hands and knees through miniature tunnels. Most Bolivians are just over four feet tall, and the mines were created by them. I barely fit, and I´m not very big.

Over the course of the mine tour we set off some dynamite, gave miners crackers and coca leaves, drilled holes, and spoke with the oldest miner there, age 64. He´d been working in the mines since he was 12, and said he would work there until he died. I´m not at all claustrophobic, but there were several points during the tour that I was ready to bolt, except the exit was really far away, through a series of tunnels I had no idea how to find my way through.

By the time we left the mine, I felt relieved. It was a very cool tour, kind of neat to crawl and climb around the guts of a mountain. But I couldn´t help but think of all the people that die there regularly, and that I am a very privileged person to be able to take a tour of a silver mine instead of work in one my whole life. It wasn´t exactly fun, but I am really glad I did it.

In the afternoon, after a quick lunch (yay for finally getting a bit of an appetite back) I went for a tour of the old mint with Christian, another American. It was a long tour, all in Spanish, with way too much Middle Ages religious art. Once we finally saw the old minting machines (and took silly pictures of ourselves using them) we left the tour; there was still an hour to go, and our guide, a Bolivian Rosie O´Donnell, talked way too much.

After that I wandered around some markets but didn´t buy anything. Potosi is an OK place; it is definitely nice to be in a bigger city again after tiny desert villages of no more than a dozen buildings. However, I wouldn´t want to spend more than a day or two here, which is fine: tomorrow I am heading to Sucre.

Posted by j3s at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Wow, Bolivia. It´s definitely different from Argentina and Chile, which seem a lot more developed. I love it though...this country feels like the South America I pictured as a child.

I just came back from three days in the salt flats and Atacama desert near Uyuni. The salt flats were absolutely surreal...white white white as far as you could see, but in the sections that retained some rain water, it was a giant mirror. And when you looked closer, all kinds of shades of blue and beige and pink. All the brochures for the place describe it as "hallucinogenic" and I can see why. It just doesn´t look like any place on earth. My eyes and camera had difficulty adjusting to just how bright everything was, but wow, I can´t wait to post pictures...in probably a month. I did a pretty good job of not getting sunburned, except for my lips; the next day they were so swollen I looked like I had a bad collagen lip job.

The day after the salt flats was basically spent driving around the desert in a 4x4, stopping every hour or two to look at a volcano, a lagoon, a rock formation, etc. Lots more pictures, definitely a fun day. I´m enjoying the tour a lot; everyone is pretty cool and under 35, which is nice. It´s also a nice change of pace to let someone else make all the arrangements about how and when to get where and where to sleep, though the way the tour is structured it gives you a lot of free time, so you don´t have to always be around people.

Yesterday, though, I was really glad I was on the tour; I would not have wanted to deal with how sick I was from the altitude by myself. I got out of bed at 5am feeling very sick, almost like food poisoning. After seeing some geysers and swimming in a hot springs at 4900 meters altitude, I started vomiting, a lot. I spent the rest of the day laying in the back of a jeep that traversed the bumpiest roads ever, feeling so dehydrated but not able to keep down water until sometime in the late afternoon. I also had a fever, excruciating headache, and the runs. My tour guide helped me get through the day, and then brought me and a few other people who were reacting badly to the altitude back to Uyuni, the town we started from three days ago. There I got a good night´s sleep, some pills for altitude sickness, and am now feeling better, ready to catch a train to Potosi.

Posted by j3s at 03:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

What a difference a day makes; I feel so much better from the altitude sickness and am really enjoying the city. I really love La Paz, it´s an appropriately named, peaceful city. I am going to try and change my ticket back to Chile, because I am scheduled to leave as soon as the tour is over, but I want to stay here longer and see more, maybe spend a couple nights on an island in Lake Titicaca.

I wanted to see the Valley of the Moon yesterday, and it was very cheap to take a half day city tour and a ride out to the valley, so I did. Turns out it was a private tour, just the driver, the guide, and me. I saw the highest point of La Paz, which is very working class, and the lowest point, which is very rich. The temperature can differ between the two by ten degrees celcius, with the better weather being lower.

My guide explained a lot of things, such as the dress of the women here: they only wear multiple skirts and petticoats, as well as their hats, once they get married. He was very concerned though that the younger women are dressing western, losing their traditions, his sadness about it weighed on me a little.

Eduardo,the guide, also told me a lot about the socioeconomic situation here, which being my father´s daughter, I found fascinating, as well as stuff about gender roles and history. I learned more about the festival of Alasita that began yesterday, and his quote "We believe that you have to pay for your dreams" still rings in my head.

After seeing several museums and markets, we drove out to the Valley of the Moon, which is a beautiful canyon of erosion, and hiked around a bit. It was also a spectacular view of the mountains, I have always enjoyed watching mountains. Someday, when I return to reality, I will get pictures posted.

Posted by j3s at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apparently I spoke (or wrote) too soon yesterday when I said that the altitude wasn´t affecting me much. By dusk, my head was pounding and my feet and hands were really swollen, my fingers looked like sausages.

I spent the afternoon checking out the markets, first the Mercado Negro, which is a huge outdoorish flea market. I didn´t see all of it, but I did find its shoe district, its fried food district, the hammock district...after that I tried to find the Witches Market, but got really lost. Only a quarter of the streets here have signs, so I got rather confused and walked a lot. Walking can be tough up mountain grade streets, and I had to stop occasionally to catch my breath. Almost 14,000 feet above sea level means some pretty thin air.

Eventually I ended up at San Pedro Prison, which I had heard a lot about from other people and the book Marching Powder. It´s a prison where you can buy better cells the more money you have. It has restaurants, and even entire families live there. They used to give tours of it, but I heard they´ve stopped. I looked inside, and saw chaos.

After getting my bearings at the prison I managed to find my way to the Witches Market, by far the most (and kind of only) touristy area of La Paz. It´s full of shops where you can buy potions, amulets, dead llama fetuses, stuff like that. I wasn´t planning on getting anything, but I ended up in a dark shop with a small stone carving in my hand that I liked. The woman told me it was for amor, and I bought it for 5 Bolivian pesos, about 75 cents.

After that I realized I hadn´t eaten all day, so I found a restaurant with a nice balcony and had a cafe con leche, a bowl of soup, and bread. Total was 10 pesos, or about a dollar 25. Bolivia is by far the cheapest country I have been to in South America.

I was feeling the affects of the altitude, so I lay down in my splurge of a private room for an hour or so before dinner. For dinner I chose the easiest option of attending the hostel´s BBQ, pretty good chorizo and homebrewed beer. The view was spectacular from the cabina where we ate, staring across the valley at the other side of the mountain.

The best part of dinner though, had to do with the fact that it was once of Bolivia´s biggest holidays, Alasitas. Basically, people buy miniature versions of what they wish for in the upcoming year, usually money, houses, etc, and have them blessed. So after dinner I was given a small packet with a miniature Bolivian passport, an American visa, Euros, Dollars (all of it fake of course), and other things. Then a holy man formed a circle and performed a ceremony blessing the miniature bundles, and blessing each person individually. It was pretty cool to get to experience a Bolivian ritual, even if it was interrupted by annoying drunk backpackers laughing. I shushed them periodically until they went away.

Anyway, that was a pretty cool part of last night. Today I am going to the Valley of the Moon, not sure if I will have time for Lake Titicaca, which I really want to see. The tour I am taking begins tonight, I think tomorrow we go to the Uyuni salt flats. I do wish now that I had just done everything on my own instead of signing up for a tour, but I know it´ll probably be safer and I have already paid for it, so it´s fine.

Posted by j3s at 05:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After a one night layover in Santiago, Chile (to which I will return in some weeks), I have arrived in La Paz, Bolivia, the highest altitude city on earth. I´d heard bad things about altitude sickness, stories of people vomiting when they get off the plane, but so far it´s not too bad. A lot of people take buses into La Paz, but I guess there has been some unrest lately and blocked roads, so for the sake of safety, even though it´s much more expensive, I chose to fly.

So far it´s quite different than where I have been in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. A big city for sure, but a lot of indigenous people, and not overly developed. Most of the inhabitants are very short; the women wear many layered skirts, woven ponchos, and little hats. I´d take a picture, but a lot of people here will get upset, as the believe it steals your soul. I don´t expect too many pictures of La Paz.

I definitely stand out here. Before she left, Kate suggested that I dye my hair darker, but for the first time in my life I am kind of ok with the natural color. However, my hair, complexion, and style of dressing earns me long stares from the majority of people I encounter on the street. Not malicious ones, but definitely noticeable.

Also, every street is basically a very steep hill, since the city is built into a mountain. It´s really easy to get winded at such an altitude, and I have to walk slowly and stop often, even though I think I am in decent shape physically. It´s also a kind of confusing city, at first at least; a lot of the maps I have seen differ from each other.

The nice news is that I splurged for tonight and got a private room at a hostel. I have been staying in 4 or 6 person dorm rooms in hostels so far, and missing privacy. Bolivia is so cheap though, that a dorm room was three dollars and a private room was twelve. So, one night of sleeping alone I figured was worth it. Not sure how well I will sleep, as the room faces the street and people use horns here every second. The hostel itself seems pretty nice, though inhabited (upon initial glance) by that annoying breed of self-righteous backpackers that I tend to avoid. Perhaps I am just getting too old for the whole backpack and hostel thing.

Regardless...Bolivia. I was warned to have a little culture shock along with the altitude sickness, and neither are very intense, but still somewhat noticeable.

Posted by j3s at 05:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I´m back in Buenos Aires. It´s nice to be someplace familiar again, but I have definitely settled into the rhythm of travel and can´t wait to go to the next place. Which is La Paz, Bolivia, the highest altitude city in the world. The more people I talk to, the more I am beginning to regret signing up for a tour of the country. I was a little nervous having heard that Bolivia is very rough, so I booked a 10 day tour. I haven´t taken a tour since 1998, really prefer to travel on my own. However, from talking to people at hostels it sounds like it´s quite accessible, and I would have been fine on my own. Ah well. The bright side is I can turn off my brain a little, not have to think about scheduling buses or finding hostels for a few days.

The bad news is I am spending money more quickly than I thought. My original plan was to head to Chile after Bolivia, then back to BA, then back to NYC. Now I think after Chile I´d really like to head south to Patagonia for a week or two...if the money holds out.

As for Cordoba, I was sad to stay there only one day. Admittedly, much of my stay was augmented by how nice of a hostel I stayed at; the asado (BBQ) Saturday night was a blast, as was checking out the rest of the town: the big Parque Sarmiento, Paseo de Flores, the Museum, and a couple clubs and bars.

My bus left Cordoba, or rather was scheduled to leave, at 11pm yesterday; at 11:20 there was still no sign of the bus. I was getting kind of nervous, but did a good job of not getting upset once I understood that I hadn´t just missed it. Eventually I found a middle aged Argentinian woman who was on my bus too, and we waited together. She didn´t speak any English, but told me all about her family and her vacation, about half of which I understood. We cheered together when the bus arrived, finally, at almost midnight. After I had taken my seat upstairs (she was sitting on the lower level of the bus), the woman found me, gave me a macrame and bead bracelet and necklace she had made, a hug, and her email address, wishing me bueno suerte. It was so sweet! Little things like this make me quite happy, and remind me why I travel.

Now that I am back in the big city, I should mention a few things about it before I forget, both good and...interesting.

- amazing steaks, so cheap. My favorite so far is La Cabrera, but I want to try other places too
- the Sunday market at Plaza Serrano
- the MALBA Museum´s permanent collection of contemporary Latin American art
- cortado (coffee)
- really cheap breezy dresses and clothes
- asado culture, BBQ is a universal activity
- seeing my friend Maurizio play good music at parties
- always needing to have small bills on hand; portenos don´t like to give change for much over a 5 or 10
- so many beautiful plazas and parks everywhere
- good cheap argentinian wine
- Palermo Viejo, a really cute neighborhood
- the difficulty in finding English books not in the genre of Clive Cussler, Danielle Steele, or Stephen King
- the weather: sunny, hot but not humid, always a breeze
- the eagerness with which portenos offer directions
- Parisian-inspired architecture
- dulce de leche
- dulce de leche ice cream at Alta Volta Heladeria

I´m sure there will be more, that´s just off the top of my head. It´s a ridiculously pleasant city.

Posted by j3s at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After a 23 hour bus ride from Puerto Iguazu, I am in Cordoba, the second biggest city in Argentina. So far it's really lovely! Feels older, and less developed than Buenos Aires, very lively, except everything seems to close down at 6pm. I highly recommend the hostel I am staying at: Baluch Backpackers, near San Martin Square.

When I set out from BsAs, I got a little tired, feeling the weight of the next month of hostel living, buses, always watching my stuff. But so far I have had really lovely experiences, and met really great people. Maria, a British girl I hung out with in Iguazu, spent 6 weeks by herself in Bolivia, where I am going next week. Everyone says it's quite rough, but after hearing her talk about it, I felt like a wuss for only planning on being there 12 days.

Side note: I am using way more commas than usual because I can't find the semicolon or dash on this keyboard. The keys aren't always what is marked.

Iguazu, by the way, was fantastic. It's been 15 years since I saw Niagra Falls, but compared to my memory, they were bigger and much more impressive. Very tropical location though, the other side of the Falls is Brazil. Which meant extreme heat and humidity, I sweated the whole time. And when it rains there, it's a really heavy intense rainforest pour. But the sun was mostly out, and I got a pretty bad sunburn regardless of #20 sunblock, and 40 incredibly big and itchy mosquito bites. I'm crossing my fingers for no malaria! Took some nice pictures, but there's no way they will do the place justice.

Tomorrow I take an 11pm bus back to BsAs, arriving sometime in the morning. Two days in Cordoba is nice, I would love to stay a third but I fly to La Paz from BsAs on Tuesday. Then: Bolivia!

Posted by j3s at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Friday Kate and I flew to Punta del Este. I can see why the NY Times described it as "The Hamptons of Buenos Aires"; it was really nice but pretty expensive. However, Kate was flown out there by some really great people to play at a festival with Gustavo Ceranti and Diplo, and they took really good care of us the whole time.

For a while I thought the highlight was playing in the ocean waves - on Saturday there was a ton of wind, great day for sailing - partially because I haven't been in the ocean since Costa Rica several years ago. However, I had so much fun at the festival, and afterwards, that it's hard to say what I enjoyed the most. Dinner on Friday set a new late record for me; I think we were eating at 2am, at the fabulous semi-Vietnamese place in the trees called Namm. I posted pictures from the whole weekend on my photolog.

After Punta dell Este I returned to Buenos Aires for another day, and a farewell dinner. I had the most amazing steak meal at La Cabrera in Palmer Viejo. Very rare, soft, juicy cuts that put me in a bit of a coma afterwards. Also, I learned the word for¨"rare" is jugoso, not crudo as I had thought. Though I am surprised by what I understand, I hope my Spanish improves now. Kate left yesterday for Chicago; she´s fluent, so I didn´t have to do much talking.

I also left Buenos Aires yesterday, got on an overnight omnibus for Puerto Iguazu, where I am now. The buses here are very nice: seats recline fully, they give you plenty of wine with meals, show movies. It´s raining here today, so I won´t go to the falls until tomorrow, but they look pretty spectacular. I am excited to see them!

Posted by j3s at 07:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If I kept a list of my favorite places in the world, the balcony of our 15th floor flat in Buenos Aires overlooking the Cementerio de la Recoleta and the Rio de la Plata, anytime day or night, would be one of those top places. The view is stunning, the breeze feels fantastic on bare shoulders, and just sitting there instills a sense of calmness over me.

It's been quite a while since I updated this blog, I know. Many things changed since I began it; for starters, I never made it on the around-the-world trek that Atom and I originally planned. That's ok; I loved Berlin so much, I have no regrets about living there for the last year. Perhaps that's why I stopped updating this site: Berlin ceased to feel like travelling, and instead it just felt like a home.

I know, I never blogged here about Paris, the wedding in Le Bugue and the South of France; Amsterdam and Eindhoven, or London, and maybe those stories will come out one day. The pictures from my year in Berlin are all on my photolog, week by week.

Now for some basics. I left Berlin on December 13 for a number of reasons: I didn't want to spend another dark winter there, I was running low on money and wanted to see someplace else before I went broke, and I figured it would be nice to spend the holidays amongst friends and family. So I flew to New York and hung out for a week before embarking on a one-week midwest tour: Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago, and Detroit before heading back to New York. After recovering from New Years celebrations, I took took off for Buenos Aires on January 4.

So far, wow. It's an amazing city. My friend Kate has been down here since early December, and I am lucky enough to stay with her in her amazing flat until she leaves. It's on the top floor (15th) of a nice building (with a doorman! I am getting spoiled) in a swanky neighborhood, Recoleta. Pictures of the flat and neighborhood are at the end of this post.

I have a few other friends in town, too. Maurizio lives here, a musician from Buenos Aires who I met when he was in Berlin for a month, Gadi, a friend from New York that synchronously (but unplanned) flew in the same day I did, and a couple friends of his, Ellie and Chaya, that I met on New Years Eve. Even though many Porteños (Buenos Aires locals) are on vacation right now, it still feels like a good time to be here. And the weather is fantastic: mid 80's, not too much humidity, nice breeze.

So far Kate and I have been taking it relatively easy, deciding last week to postpone the touristy sightseeing (museums, landmarks) until this week. Regardless, I still feel like I've seen a lot just running around town to meet friends, shop, and dance. Maurizio played parties on Friday and Saturday, which were a lot of fun. I enjoyed seeing what the local scene was like, and was reminded how much techno music makes the world a smaller place.

We've also done a bit of shopping; I love the exchange rate right now. After getting trounced by the Euro for a year, three pesos to a dollar is nice breathing room. I was on such a tight budget for so long that I feel quite luxurious at the moment: eating big steaks in fancy restaurants, considering going to a spa. I haven't bought new clothes in a year and a half, and while they go over my budget, I can justify the expense. I figure when I am done traveling I'll have to go back to work, and will need clothes for that. However, I'd rather spend the money now, because here a dress I like costs 15 dollars instead of 100.

Also, I love the weekly outdoor markets that abound around town. Yesterday, Kate and I explored the hipster market in Palermo at the Plaza Serrano. Before really getting into it, we ate at a restaurant on a main corner. After ordering sandwiches and a bottle of wine to split, our bill was about 4 US dollars, with tip. Also, we eat a lot of our meals at home to save money. The last year has definitely taught me a lot about budgeting.

One thing I love about this city is that every street seems to have a lush canopy of trees; it makes even the not-so-great neighborhoods much lovelier. And for those worried about my safety, this city is safer than Chicago. Instead of staying in patrol cars, policemen stand around on most corners for their shifts. Also, the Argentinians I have met so far seem to just be really friendly and helpful.

I do plan on leaving the country, seeing more of South America. Kate's playing at a festival in Punta del Este this weekend, and I'm going with her. After she goes back to the States, I'd like to go to Chile and see Santiago, and possibly check out Boliva and Peru, but only if it seems safe for a woman traveling on her own. I'm not too worried, but I don't want to be an oblivious idiot.

That's all for now, I'll try to be better about updating this site more often now that I am traveling again; in addition, I am still updating my photolog. As promised, pictures of our flat:

Kate working on music in the living room:

My laundry, drying on the balcony above the Cementerio de la Recoleta:

Dawn from the kitchen window:

Seen between the rails of our balcony:

The street we live on, Las Heras:

Posted by j3s at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)