Long way to go

It´s good to be in Iquique (Chile), I feel like I came here to breathe. But before I write about this cozy but fun beach city, I have to gather some thoughts, both good and bad, as a farewell post to Bolivia.

- One thing Bolivia is known for is its weaving, all sorts of beautiful colors into patterns. After travelling around, I understood a little more where the inspiration might come from: the intense magenta mountains, sea green phosphorous rocks, red lakes, blinding white and beige salt flats, the bluest skies ever. It´s like the landscape morphs into one of the vibrant blankets.

- Most of the roads in Bolivia are unpaved, which makes for some pretty rough rides, sometimes fording small rivers. However, most drivers seems to be fast, expert mechanics, and if they´re not the bus will usually have a mechanic ride with the driver. On the road from Uyuni to Potosi, we had to keep stopping every hour for someone to jump out and tighten the bolts on the wheel so it wouldn´t fall off.

- The food, of course I have to write about it. I love Bolivian soups, and can´t wait to start cooking with quinoa when I get back to the states. I also ate some llama, which is a red meat, and a little tough but not bad. The only cheese widely available was llama cheese, which was kind of good at first (though rather salty), but I tired of it rather quickly; oh what I would give for some good Stilton, or Brie. I loved the bars of pressed nuts that were sold on the street, and usually had a few in my bag in case I couldn´t have a real meal. My favorite drink was a submarino: a bar of chocolate melted into hot milk. Ridiculously rich, not something to drink every day, but so good.

- English isn´t widely spoken in Bolivia, and it was nice to practice my Spanish a little more. However, I noticed that most of the Bolivians I had random conversations with on the street, in restaurants, etc, were old men. The women basically ignored me.

- There are many stores in La Paz, but the easiest and cheapest way to buy stuff is from one of the thousands of small street stalls, or from people selling things spread out on a blanket on the ground. You can buy almost anything this way, which is kind of cool.

- The exchange rate in Bolivia is much better than any place else I have been so far. Most lunches can be had for under a dollar, and a really nice meal with lots of drinks might be five or six.

- Coca leaves are everywhere: at the hostal breakfast spreads to make tea in the morning, for sale in the street, in the cheeks of most men. The practice of chewing coca leaves is very traditional to the Bolivian people, and there is a big distinction between them and cocaine; I saw a lot of graffiti that said "Coca no es la cocaina" and t-shirts that said "Coca no es un droga." (Actually, they said more grammatically correct versions of those two statements, my SPanish isn´t good.) I tried chewing the leaves a few times, but didn´t really like it. I rather enjoyed the tea though, and might pick up a box of mate de coca as a more relaxed alternative to coffee.

- Most small towns didn´t seem to have garbage collection, or if they did, there wasn´t one specific place it was taken. Instead, the roads just outside of town were strewn with all kinds of garbage in various states of decomposition, which made me sad to see, especially when the land is so beautiful otherwise.

- I loved the little rock piles (cairns?) that were all over the countryside. I could never figure out if they were property markers (I suspect the painted ones were), or just a simple statement that in such a lonely desert, someone was here.

- There seems to be a set delineation between acceptable jobs for men (driving) and women (selling things). For example, I was told that if a woman were to take a job as a driver, people would assume she was a lesbian. This is when I have mixed feelings about cultural change. On one hand, I am sad when the women of La Paz start to lose their traditional dress, wearing jeans and tank tops instead. On the other hand, I am against homophobia and misoginy, and am happy to hear that set perceptions of gender roles are changing. But then I feel bad that the culture is losing its traditions...Part of me likes the way the world is getting smaller, and part of me laments it. What it comes down to though is that I´m not from Bolivia, so it´s not really my place to comment on how things should be.

- Overall, Bolivia seemed to me to be a very magical place. It´s the South America I dreamed about as a kid, and I am so happy that I had a chance to explore it now, because it is starting to change due to developing influences. Once I got over altitude adjustments (and sickness), it became one of my most favorite places I have ever been.

Posted by j3s at 04:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lots to catch up on.

Sunday night I found a bar showing the Superbowl, which was cool. I remember the Bears winning 20 years ago, and was hoping for a repeat. Had a very surreal moment when a hush fell over the room for the national anthem...in La Paz. Stranger still was that there were five people there from Chicago! I never expected that. It was fun for a little while, until the Bears started losing badly. Ah well.

The next morning I headed out for Lake Titicaca. And yes, the inner six year old giggles every time I say that. Anyway, I was really excited to see it; the lake was half the reason I changed my flight to stay in Bolivia longer. I will sound like a hippie for a minute and say that all the books I have read describe the place as having a tangible energy..and really, it does.

It was so cool being there; Inca civilizations lived along the lake, and every mountain is full of terraces. I remember seeing pictures of terraced hills in National Geographic as a child, and the yesterday, I was walking along one. Pretty amazing.

I started out in Copacabana, a small sleepy hippie beach town, from which I caught a two hour boat ride to the Isle del Sol, Island of the Sun. When I was there, I visited some really old ruins; no one else was there, I had them all to myself, which was amazing. I sat in a stone seat that the old Inca kings used to sit in to receive the energy from the rising sun. Wow.

I went to bed pretty early, since the generator shut off at 10, and I was exhausted from walking up a mountain twice. However, I was woken up around 2am by the most intense thunderstorm I have ever experienced. Torrential rain on the corrugated roof, lightning purpling the curtains every minute. The storm got closer and closer until lightning and thunder were simultaneous, right out my window. Funny thing is, I never got out of bed; normally I would get up and at least look out the window, but something kept me in place, and it was not just the stream of water pouring in from under the door. I was frozen, something inside me saying do not move, as if getting up would carry me away on the storm. Sounds silly to say now, but Lake Titicaca is so intense, it made sense.

The next morning, this morning, the lake was almost eerily calm, flat and gray (Titicaca means something like puma gray, there were pumas on the island until about ten years ago). It changes colors depending on the light and time of day, and there are idols and more ruins at the bottom of the lake.

I left the island this morning and took a very long bus ride back to La Paz. It is good to be back in an amazing, beginning to be familiar but still esoteric city. On the bus I sat next to a cool Norwegian girl, and ended up giving tips to some Brits about hostels, markets, and other stuff about the city. Almost felt like a tour guide for a minute. I will miss this place, I was just starting to get comfortable here. Tomorrow I fly to Iquique, Chile, for the next section of my trip.

Posted by j3s at 02:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning, after saying goodbye to people, I flew from Sucre to La Paz. Let´s just say that Bolivian domestic air travel security is...nonexistent. I never showed a passport, never had a bag searched, much less x-rayed. But I made it back safely to this wonderful city!

I was originally supposed to fly to Iquique, Chile tomorrow (Chicago Bears in the Superbowl! I must find a place to watch), but I love Bolivia so much that I decided to change my ticket to Wednesday. Bonus: no change fee. LAN Chile is a great airline. And now I have time to check out Lake Titicaca and Isle del Sol.

One of the reasons why I am glad to be back in La Paz is because of Carnival. In Potosi and Sucre, Catholicism is a lot more common, and young boys use Carnival as an excuse to bombard women with water balloons and water guns on an hourly basis. I got blasted at least once a day in those towns, which is ok when it´s hot, but it´s not always fun to be soaking wet at night at a high altitude. At least I never got hit with one that had the fabled food coloring or bleach in it. However, I haven´t seen a single water balloon attack in La Paz. I think it´s because the indigenous religions are stronger here, Catholicism has less of an influence.

It´s nice to be back in this enigmatic city, and nice to be travelling alone again. I´ll miss the group I was with, but it was time for me to head off anyway. Back to solo dinners spent reading and writing...at least I´ll get another book finished. I will miss having someone to watch my back, and my stuff.

I had the strangest dream the other morning: I was getting ready to fly to Iquique, and going through the contents of my bag. Everything that was in my bag in real life was in it in my dream. I don´t have that much stuff with me, so I know the contents by heart, and in dreams I guess. I remember being especially concerned for my passport, though in the end it was there and I got on the plane safely.

Posted by j3s at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I´m in Sucre now, the old capitol of Bolivia. It´s a lot different than La Paz, the functioning capitol; Sucre is much more chill, colonial, developed, a little wealthier. It´s also at a much lower altitude, 2800 meters, which means much easier breathing. It´s nice to be in a place that feels like a real city again...the place I am staying at, Hotel Independencia, is ridiculously nice. Two verdant courtyards, colonial sitting rooms, nice beds. Then again, my definition of luxurious has shifted; anything with running water and a generator that stays on after 10pm is nice to me now.

Yesterday after getting to town, I went to see what Sucre is famous for: dinosaur tracks. There´s a large quarry where they found a ton of footprints from the Cretaceous period. It wasn´t terribly exciting, but I am glad I saw them. Later last night I went out with a big group of people from the tour for a nice dinner, followed by way too many rounds of shots, followed by dancing at a club a vaguely remember being called Mitos, or something like that.

The music here - by here I don´t just mean Bolivia, but Argentina and Uruguay as well - is extremely retro. I have heard more hits from my childhood in the last month than I have in the last five years. Eighties hits and raggaeton, pretty ubiquitous. I miss proper techno a little, but I got so much of it in Berlin last year (and truthfully, over the last twelve years) that I don´t mind the break.

This morning I got to sleep in a little, a rare treat. Most travelling days involve waking up before 8am, which I haven´t had to do in years. I was going to go paragliding today, but that meant getting up at 6am and I was out till 3 so...nope. Sucre is also the chocolate center of Bolivia, so I tried to take a tour of a couple chocolate factories, but they were both closed. So, it´s a chill day for me: strolling around the shady squares, relaxing at cafes, being mellow. I love all the lovely public plazashere, though the altitude makes for a very intense temperature difference between sun and shade.

Tonight is my last night with the tour group. The rest of them are travelling on together on another tour to Brazil; as much as I was dreading taking a tour, I have really enjoyed it, and will kind of miss the people I have been travelling with. Mostly that´s because I lucked out and got a really cool group of people, and a great tour leader.

Tomorrow morning I fly back to La Paz, back to travelling on my own and staying in hostels instead of hotels. I don´t mind though, I enjoy being independent; it´s an important part of travelling for me. I just hope I can change my plane ticket to Chile so I can stay in Bolivia a little longer.

Posted by j3s at 08:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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)