I had an exciting morning on Tuesday. First, I was asked to take photos of a couple of interviews, which was mildly exciting. But most excitingly, there was a road block just outside of Cochabamba, and Noe (one of the photographers in Los Tiempos) took me along to cover it. The people of a poor barrio (district) were protesting because the government had not completed the surfacing of a main road linking it to Cochabamba city, and the completion of the road was not included in any of the newly published city plans. When we arrived at the site of the road block, at about10.30am, we were faced with queues of traffic that had been waiting to pass for five hours, including several large intercity passenger buses. A melee of campesinos were sitting on benches and standing together lengthways across the road to block the traffic, holding homemade placards imploring the government to complete the road. A couple of hundred metres back from the protesters, groups of armed police were stood around their riot vans preparing for action. There were some agressive verbal confrontations between some angry protesters and a few policemen, and sometimes between the protesters and frustrated car and bus drivers anxious to get moving. But it was only towards midday when things started to happen. The police began to line up with their shields and their guns at the ready, and Noe told me to go and wait out of the way in case it got dangerous. Sure enough, the police began to fire shots into the air and released canisters of tear gas, dispersing the crowds and sending people fleeing in all directions clutching their noses and mouths. There was lots of shouting and the threat of violence, but there was I think only one injury. Within half an hour, the police were able to usher the traffic through again. I'm not sure what will happen regarding the uncompleted road. I got a lift back home on the photographer's motorbike.
Wednesday night, the shortest night of the year, was the Aymara new year's eve. Traditionally (or not, if you listen to my host father) the Aymara people stay up all night and welcome the sunrise, and by extension the new year, with open arms. I'd heard that many people climb up to the Inca ruins in Sipe Sipe, about an hour and a half out of Cochabamba, on Wednesday night and welcome the sunrise from the top of the hill on Thursday morning. Despite much persuasion, I could only persuade Jack to come with me, as poor Gail was ill again. We got a few hours of sleep before leaving at 2am by bus to Sipe Sipe. We'd been told it would take no more than an hour to walk from the village plaza up to the top of the hill, but this turned out to be another Bolivian mis-estimation. It took us two and a half hours to reach the top, one and a half of which were spent stretching our lungs and working our calves to capacity hiking up one very steep mountain. I very much regretted going to the gym earlier that evening, and wished I'd opted for a small bottle of vodka instead of lugging four glass litre-bottles of beer up with us.
It was worth it though, to see hundreds of people wrapped up warm drinking, singing and playing guitar clustered around little bonfires waiting for the sunrise. Some students recognised Jack from his English classes and invited us to sit around their bonfire and share the beer. Unfortunately they weren't bonfire experts so, except for periods of a few seconds when lighter fuel was poured over the embers to produce vigorous flames, we spent the next hour or so gazng hopefully at a few dimly glowing but very smokey twigs. Eventually, light from the sun began to appear and intensify, so we followed everyone else in making our way towards the edge to watch the sunrise and the coming of the new year. It was a magical occasion, as everyone raised their palms towards the yellowing sky, arms outstretched, silently waiting. The atmosphere was only interrupted occasionally when an inebriated youth clumsily tripped over a rock and fell over. The festivities ended quickly and everyone began to disperse once the sun had fully risen. We found a trufi that was heading for Cochabamba, and had breakfast in town before returning back home for a pre-lunchtime snooze.
Jack and I had been planning to go to Sucre for the weekend, and we'd managed to persuade Amy and Kevan to come too. Getting to the bus station 45 minutes before the buses are due to depart is usually plenty early enough to buy tickets, but this time we were unlucky. Obviously everyone was travelling to friends and family for the festival of San Juan on Saturday, and there was no space with any of the companies. I felt a bit responsible for getting Amy and Kevan to the bus stop in anticipation of a fun weekend away and then failing to find space it the buses for them. We decided to postpone Sucre for a week and use this weekend to see more of Cochabamba. Disheartened, we made straight for a bar and spent the evening eating pizza and pancakes, drinking sangria and playing pick-up-sticks. Someone else had Jenga. I'd even been looking forward to the bus journey.
The next day I met Jack early with the hope of finding a tourist agency that hired bikes so we could go exploring the surrounding countryside. No such luck. Instead, we caught a bus to Quillacollo, the original site of the old city of Cochabamba, to see a festival of maize that my host sister had told me about. It was taking place at the Inca maize storage towers just outside the town. It was an enjoyable way to spend a few hours. On the way up in the taxi we passed hundreds of youngsters dressed in traditional clothing (including brightly coloured Andean hats) running from Quillacollo to the site of the festival in a historic race to mark the occasion. Policemen and women, seemingly with nothing better to do that day, tripped over themselves to explain the history, cultural importance, and uses of maize to us, which they'd obviously memorised, or in some cases just read, from the noticeboards behind them. We sampled some real chicha (beer made from maize), chewed some coca leaves, and watched ceremonies performed to win the favour of Pachamama (Mother Earth). Since Jack had a burger at the festival, we had lunch in a vegetarian restaurant back in Cochabamba, and spent the rest of the afternoon searching for an outdoor swimming pool. Two were empty of water, but we eventually found one that was open and functioning and paid our 20Bs entry. It was brain-freezing cold. Not even the most frenzied swimming could make it bearable. So we sampled the eucalyptus and camomile flavoured saunas before calling it a day and going to the cinema. We had a choice between Shrek 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean 3, so for no particular reason we opted for the latter. It was a bad film, bafflingly surreal at points, but quite entertaining thanks mainly to Jonny Depp. That night the family were having a barbecue at home, which, along with bonfires and fireworks, is the traditional way of celebrating San Juan. I got a cheese sandwich washed down by a couple of glasses of vino caliente (hot wine) and some delicious hot egg-nog type drink made from condensed milk, coconut, and cane sugar liquor, before hitting the sack.
I had a little chat with my host father about San Juan and the Aymara new year. It went much like our other little chats: I mention where I've been and what I've seen, and how interesting and fun all these events seem, and he attempts to destroy my enthusiasm with his cynicism. I said how nice it was that everyone celebrates San Juan, and he replied that it's not a traditional Bolivian festival at all but a recent Spanish import, and that whilst in Spain the fireworks and bonfires are nice affairs, here the festivities are out of control, with people setting off fireworks in the streets and setting fire to everything. I suggested that the Aymara new year festivities are a nice symbol of how traditional Bolivian culture is being kept alive and that perhaps they help to provide a sense of unity and nationhood, but he said that it's all lies, that the solstice has only recently been celebrated and that nobody really knows anything about how things used to be done. Hermán maintained that it's not at all a force for unity, because only a small portion of the population is Aymara, and the people of the Cochabamba area are all Quechua, if anything. He suggested that if he went into the street on the eve of the Aymara new year and killed a dog, he'd be applauded, because people consider it 'traditional' and 'Andean' to sacrifice animals, and how barbaric this is. To conclude, he referred to the birth of the Andean cultures on Isla del Sol on Lake Titicaca, where supposedly the Andean society was formed around three laws: do not be lazy, do not steal, and do not lie. According to Hermán, those who claim to be descendents of the historic Andean cultures and who glorify their ideology, the supposedly 'indigenous' majority of Bolivia, are lazy thieves and liars. For Hermán, this is perfectly evidenced by the protests of the campesinos blocking the road to Quillacollo on Friday. Instead of working hard to earn their living and feed their families, these people expect and demand gifts from the government, leeching off the good industrious Bolivians, like Hermán I imagine. Such are the divisions in Bolivian society.
As agreed, I met Jack at 8.30am the bottom of his street in my sports gear to run to the bottom of the hill with the giant statue of Chirst, and up the 1250 steps to the top. We'd attempted it the previous week, at a far less sociable hour of 6.30am, but only made it half way up before we had to return in order to make it to work on time. It had been knackering, for me especially because I was trying to keep up with Jack who, at over 6ft, has legs about twice as long as mine. This time, we had no time limits, and I was setting the pace. After half an hour of running before getting to the start of the steps, we were already pretty tired, but we went for it. I ended up just climbing as fast as I could walking, but Jack tried to run and beat me to the statue. It was exhausting but it felt good to get to the top. I hadn't brought my camera, assuming that the statue wouldn't be open to climb up so early, so (after a long break to let our heart rates return to something approximating normal) we ran back down and back to my house to get it. We got a bus back to the base of the hill, but being the exercise junkies we both are, we refused to take the cable car and climbed it again. It was good training for Huayna Potosí.
The inside of the Cristo is really pretty grim considering the majesty of the well-kept, white statue. It's just dirty bare concrete and loose handrails running up the rusting cast-iron spiral staircases, with graphic signs warning visitors not to urinate inside. Barbed wire fences now prevent tourists from getting too close to the person-sized holes at the end of each arm, from which a few people have reportedly committed suicide. It is no longer possible to climb up into the head of Jesus, but only up to his shoulders, but the views are great from the small holes in the walls of his chest. Or they would be, were it not for the thick borwn-grey cloud of smog that hangs over the city, almost obscuring from view the beautiful green mountains that enclose the city. The viewholes, which from the outside make it look as though Jesus quite likes acupuncture, were at just the right height for me. I'm not sure whether it's a good or a bad thing that I seem to be the same height as the average Bolivian.
I had lunch with the family that Sunday for the first time since my first weekend in Cochabamba. Sunday is Vicky's day off, so Cristina cooks. It was a classic lunch of eggs, cheesy rice, baked bananas and salad. I caught up with Jen, who was busy conducting interviews and reading as research for her book. I can't wait to read it. Amy had gone with Kevan on a tour to the Inca ruins at Sipe Sipe that day, but they (probably sensibly) had opted for a four-by-four ride to the top, rather than climbing the mountain. That afternoon, Jack and I went to a park in the centre of town with our books to chill out after our strenuous morning. We'd wanted to go and lounge in the botanical gardens, but it was shut, so we had to resort to the smaller and busy municipal park. Typically for our weekend, on the one day we wanted to chill out in the sunshine, it was cloudy for the first time in weeks. We stayed anyway. The swings proved irresistable and (should I be admitting this?) the highlight of the afternoon. We endured the drumming band that had chosen this park and this day to rehearse and the campesinos squeezing their hooters to remind us every 5 minutes that they were selling ice-cream, and read our books whilst watching the kids go round the concrete paths on their go-karts (one spoilt little brat even had a motorised version). When it got too dark and too cold to sit out any more, we found an ice-cream parlour and had some cake. Globos need a lesson in what is and what is not a brownie; fruit-of-the forest chocolate cake most definitely is not. I'd been looking forward to that brownie all day. Going to bed at 10pm almost made up for it.
Monday, June 25, 2007
The Jungle
When I got back from Salar, Amelia and Marie-Ann arrived back in Cochabamba after their month of travelling to collect the stuff they'd left before flying home. It was good to catch up with them. We all went out for pancakes on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, a new volunteer arrived to stay in my house. I was invited to move out of the little annex and into one of the rooms inside. Although I miss having my own bathroom, I don't miss the smelly leaky toilet and the cold nights, and having a double bed and loads of storage space is very nice. Amy, a really lovely 20-year old medical student from St Andrews, moved into the annex. She's come with her boyfriend Kevan, but he's living elsewhere.
I only had to work two days this week - TPA had organised a trip to Puerto Villa Roel in the jungle departing on Thursday morning. In this respect, the trip was a great idea. In another, less so. Jack, Gail and I had been planning on going to Puerto that weekend to visit Alexis, one of the volunteers there, and see the jungle. We mentioned it to Daniela, TPA director, and asked if we could stay in the volunteers' lodgings. She promptly hijacked our trip and turned it into a TPA-wide militarised working weekend. At a meeting on Tuesday night she produced copies of our 'schedule', detailing exactly what we would be doing at every hour of the day. All four days involved getting up at 6.30am at working until 6.30pm, and even stated that we would be taking an 'early night' on Thursday. A little bit put out, Gail and I decided to go to Puerto for the first two days and head to Villa Tunari, another jungle village, on Saturday morning for the weekend. Jack was going to stay in Cochabamba and join us on Friday night in Puerto.
On Thursday morning we drove down from Cochabamba through the mountains of beautiful cloud forest into the lowlands, reaching Puerto Villa Roel, at between 200 and 300m above sea level, some four hours later. Within minutes of getting out of the van, I was sweating pints with a shiny face and ever-fluffier hair. We walked to the volunteers' house along a dirt track by the side of the river, passing fruit trees and even coca bushes. Gail and I were very excited to note that the house had a hammock, as well as cat with a tiny little kitten. Well, Gail wasn't so excited about the cats; she is allergic. The women who worked in the house had prepared a lunch of gloopy overcooked pasta soup with bits of dubious meat, which we picked at. This was to be the culinary theme of meals in Puerto. That afternoon we met Alexis and Jonathon, another volunteer. Alexis was planting and building and generally getting his hands dirty and his legs bitten, whilst Jonathon was working in the guardería, or nursery, in the village, and wearing trousers. We found some machetes and took each others pictures pretending to hack away at a banana tree, and then wandered into the village. We watched some boys playing on a dugout canoe in the river and sat at a little café to sample some chicha de maiz and chicha de maní (drinks made from corn and peanut respectively), which I enjoyed but everyone else seemed to find repulsive.
Dinner for me was a great improvement. After telling the cook that I was a vegetarian, I was presented with a plate of rice, egg, fried bananas, potato, yuca and salad. The other volunteers, faced with a similarly overcooked, gloopy soup, were very envious. It made a nice change. Whilst washing up, someone spotted what looked like a fish on the floor of the kitchen. We all stared at the strange creature for a while, and then were even more amazed when it began to walk (or waddle) across the floor and out of the door. "Let me through I'm a zoologist" Gail identified it as a lung fish. After dinner we went back into the village to find a bar for a drink. On the way, whilst happily chatting to Mel about journalism and suchlike, I managed to fall neck-deep into a ditch, which seemed to entertain everyone immensely. Jonathon and Alexis took us to the best bar in town, which had a ramshackle jukebox and a broken pool table, and - like all the bars in the village - served only large bottles of coca cola and one type of beer. Local children swarmed around me and Gail when they spotted our cameras, so we had some fun taking pictures of them. Mel and Carmen, one of the more fun members of the TPA staff, spent the evening flirting outrageously with Alexis and Jonathon. Gail and I had managed to claim the only spare bed with a mattress in the boys room, so had quite a good night's sleep. We needed earplugs though, to block out the sounds of the jungle. The 12 or so other volunteers were sleeping on the hard tiled floors.
The next morning, thankfully later than scheduled, we started work at the guardería. It was in an awful state. Formerly an abattoir, it was dark, dirty and smelly. There was rat excrement everywhere, even up the walls, which were crumbling badly. The mattresses and blankets for the cots where covered in faeces, pee and vomit. It was hard to believe that children were cared for here. We began by clearing the place out, sweeping up, and cleaning and disinfecting. I spent most of the day mixing cement and filling the holes in the walls so that they could be painted. It was hot, hard work, but with music from the retro ghetto-blaster it was enjoyable. We worked all day, save for a couple of hours at lunch, but without electric lights, by 6pm it was getting too dark to paint. Dinner was fish omlette, made from the same big fish that had been sitting in the sink outside all day, and salad: a marginal improvement on gloopy soup, was the consensus. That evening some of the volunteers took Jonathon and Alexis' English lesson for them, teaching a group of 20 or 30 village children in the main room of the volunteer house for an hour, whilst the rest of us played with the kitten and chatted. Daniela, Jack, Amy and Kevan, along with another member of the TPA staff and her boyfriend, arrived that evening. Gail got ill that night and blamed the fish. She went to bed, her sickness justifying another night on the only mattress, whilst the rest of us went out to the only 'club' in Puerto. It was different from the bar of last night only in the volume of music, which was almost too loud to shout to the waiter how many beer and cokes we wanted. Not wanting to disturb Gail, I slept on the un-cushioned wooden frame of the other spare bunk in the boys' room. It was still better than the floor, and I slept remarkably well. Jack, on the harder floor, did not.
Jonathon arrived just as we all woke up that morning. He claimed he'd been for an early morning walk, but he'd clearly spent the night elsewhere with a Bolivian lady. Evidently neither Carmen nor Mel had succeeded in seducing Alexis, for he slept in his own bed last night. A little while after the other dedicated volunteers traipsed back off to the guardería to get back to work, Jack, Gail and I got a taxi to Villa Tunari. We found a nice hostel with real matresses on the beds, and, finding that a recommended restaurant that served vegetarian food only opened at 4pm, had a yummy pizza lunch. We contemplated rafting or canoeing, but settled for a jungle trek with a crazy guide and his dog, who proved to be even more useful than the guide. I spent the trek wondering why on earth the guide had told me to wear my trainers instead of my flip flops, as most of it was spent wading waist-deep through a river. Gail and Jack had sturdy sandals on whilst a mound of sand was growing in each of my squelching shoes. It was a lot of fun though, clambering through lush, dense jungle and spotting huge brightly coloured butterflies and tuneful birds. We sampled some of the fruit from which chocolate is derived. This red, hard-skinned fruit containing sweet, furry purple beans seems far removed from chocolate, and certainly tasted nothing like it, but was quite nice. Wading through the river was slow work. Before long it got dark (and I mean dark) and we still had three hours of trekking to go, so we got out our torches. We had a bit of a scare when the guide's big lamp died. Jack tried to help by offering to share mine or Gails and give his torch to Jorge, but then promply dropped it in the river. Fortunately it still worked. The veggie restaurant was closed again, so we had a pizza dinner too. My trainers were in a sorry state when we got back.
The next morning we went to visit Parque Machia, a jungle wildlife reserve famous for it's community of monkeys rescued from the maltreatment of owners. They were loads of them, and they were very cute. One took a liking to Gail, and brought her a piece of banana whilst it sat and ate a piece of papaya on her shoulder. Having been warned not to take anything but ourselves beyond the park entrance, Gail had bought a disposable camera to snap the monkeys, but it had a good chew. Another fell in love with Jack and stubbornly hung on to his neck whilst we walked up to a viewpoint. It was clearly in a state of excitement (he was male, we could tell) and gave a jealous squeal if Jack prodded me or Gail. After about half an hour, Jack got sick of having a hot neck and tried to get rid of it, but he had to run from the little bugger who followed him up the path. Fortunately, we thought, it took interest in a little girl when we got to the mirador and climbed up her instead. But the girl panicked and the monkey bit her, quite deeply. We spent the next hour or so trying to keep the monkey, who was now rather agressive, away from her and from another little girl it bit about 10 minutes later, whilst Jack ran off to get help. The girl's family had to take her to hospital. I no longer wanted a monkey as a pet.
That afternoon we played a few games of pool in a bar, found a swimming pool and had a swim, and had a bit of dinner before heading back. The veggie restaurant was closed again, so I had to make do with an omlette. It took six hours to get back because rain had made the unsurfaced roads hazardous.
The next day I had a look at the photos of the nursery taken on Sunday before the others had left. It was almost unrecognisable. The cots, blankets and matresses had been cleaned and the walls were pink, yellow, blue and green, and free of rat poo. I felt a little guilty that I hadn't been there on the Saturday and Sunday, but they seemed to have done a good enough job without us.
I only had to work two days this week - TPA had organised a trip to Puerto Villa Roel in the jungle departing on Thursday morning. In this respect, the trip was a great idea. In another, less so. Jack, Gail and I had been planning on going to Puerto that weekend to visit Alexis, one of the volunteers there, and see the jungle. We mentioned it to Daniela, TPA director, and asked if we could stay in the volunteers' lodgings. She promptly hijacked our trip and turned it into a TPA-wide militarised working weekend. At a meeting on Tuesday night she produced copies of our 'schedule', detailing exactly what we would be doing at every hour of the day. All four days involved getting up at 6.30am at working until 6.30pm, and even stated that we would be taking an 'early night' on Thursday. A little bit put out, Gail and I decided to go to Puerto for the first two days and head to Villa Tunari, another jungle village, on Saturday morning for the weekend. Jack was going to stay in Cochabamba and join us on Friday night in Puerto.
On Thursday morning we drove down from Cochabamba through the mountains of beautiful cloud forest into the lowlands, reaching Puerto Villa Roel, at between 200 and 300m above sea level, some four hours later. Within minutes of getting out of the van, I was sweating pints with a shiny face and ever-fluffier hair. We walked to the volunteers' house along a dirt track by the side of the river, passing fruit trees and even coca bushes. Gail and I were very excited to note that the house had a hammock, as well as cat with a tiny little kitten. Well, Gail wasn't so excited about the cats; she is allergic. The women who worked in the house had prepared a lunch of gloopy overcooked pasta soup with bits of dubious meat, which we picked at. This was to be the culinary theme of meals in Puerto. That afternoon we met Alexis and Jonathon, another volunteer. Alexis was planting and building and generally getting his hands dirty and his legs bitten, whilst Jonathon was working in the guardería, or nursery, in the village, and wearing trousers. We found some machetes and took each others pictures pretending to hack away at a banana tree, and then wandered into the village. We watched some boys playing on a dugout canoe in the river and sat at a little café to sample some chicha de maiz and chicha de maní (drinks made from corn and peanut respectively), which I enjoyed but everyone else seemed to find repulsive.
Dinner for me was a great improvement. After telling the cook that I was a vegetarian, I was presented with a plate of rice, egg, fried bananas, potato, yuca and salad. The other volunteers, faced with a similarly overcooked, gloopy soup, were very envious. It made a nice change. Whilst washing up, someone spotted what looked like a fish on the floor of the kitchen. We all stared at the strange creature for a while, and then were even more amazed when it began to walk (or waddle) across the floor and out of the door. "Let me through I'm a zoologist" Gail identified it as a lung fish. After dinner we went back into the village to find a bar for a drink. On the way, whilst happily chatting to Mel about journalism and suchlike, I managed to fall neck-deep into a ditch, which seemed to entertain everyone immensely. Jonathon and Alexis took us to the best bar in town, which had a ramshackle jukebox and a broken pool table, and - like all the bars in the village - served only large bottles of coca cola and one type of beer. Local children swarmed around me and Gail when they spotted our cameras, so we had some fun taking pictures of them. Mel and Carmen, one of the more fun members of the TPA staff, spent the evening flirting outrageously with Alexis and Jonathon. Gail and I had managed to claim the only spare bed with a mattress in the boys room, so had quite a good night's sleep. We needed earplugs though, to block out the sounds of the jungle. The 12 or so other volunteers were sleeping on the hard tiled floors.
The next morning, thankfully later than scheduled, we started work at the guardería. It was in an awful state. Formerly an abattoir, it was dark, dirty and smelly. There was rat excrement everywhere, even up the walls, which were crumbling badly. The mattresses and blankets for the cots where covered in faeces, pee and vomit. It was hard to believe that children were cared for here. We began by clearing the place out, sweeping up, and cleaning and disinfecting. I spent most of the day mixing cement and filling the holes in the walls so that they could be painted. It was hot, hard work, but with music from the retro ghetto-blaster it was enjoyable. We worked all day, save for a couple of hours at lunch, but without electric lights, by 6pm it was getting too dark to paint. Dinner was fish omlette, made from the same big fish that had been sitting in the sink outside all day, and salad: a marginal improvement on gloopy soup, was the consensus. That evening some of the volunteers took Jonathon and Alexis' English lesson for them, teaching a group of 20 or 30 village children in the main room of the volunteer house for an hour, whilst the rest of us played with the kitten and chatted. Daniela, Jack, Amy and Kevan, along with another member of the TPA staff and her boyfriend, arrived that evening. Gail got ill that night and blamed the fish. She went to bed, her sickness justifying another night on the only mattress, whilst the rest of us went out to the only 'club' in Puerto. It was different from the bar of last night only in the volume of music, which was almost too loud to shout to the waiter how many beer and cokes we wanted. Not wanting to disturb Gail, I slept on the un-cushioned wooden frame of the other spare bunk in the boys' room. It was still better than the floor, and I slept remarkably well. Jack, on the harder floor, did not.
Jonathon arrived just as we all woke up that morning. He claimed he'd been for an early morning walk, but he'd clearly spent the night elsewhere with a Bolivian lady. Evidently neither Carmen nor Mel had succeeded in seducing Alexis, for he slept in his own bed last night. A little while after the other dedicated volunteers traipsed back off to the guardería to get back to work, Jack, Gail and I got a taxi to Villa Tunari. We found a nice hostel with real matresses on the beds, and, finding that a recommended restaurant that served vegetarian food only opened at 4pm, had a yummy pizza lunch. We contemplated rafting or canoeing, but settled for a jungle trek with a crazy guide and his dog, who proved to be even more useful than the guide. I spent the trek wondering why on earth the guide had told me to wear my trainers instead of my flip flops, as most of it was spent wading waist-deep through a river. Gail and Jack had sturdy sandals on whilst a mound of sand was growing in each of my squelching shoes. It was a lot of fun though, clambering through lush, dense jungle and spotting huge brightly coloured butterflies and tuneful birds. We sampled some of the fruit from which chocolate is derived. This red, hard-skinned fruit containing sweet, furry purple beans seems far removed from chocolate, and certainly tasted nothing like it, but was quite nice. Wading through the river was slow work. Before long it got dark (and I mean dark) and we still had three hours of trekking to go, so we got out our torches. We had a bit of a scare when the guide's big lamp died. Jack tried to help by offering to share mine or Gails and give his torch to Jorge, but then promply dropped it in the river. Fortunately it still worked. The veggie restaurant was closed again, so we had a pizza dinner too. My trainers were in a sorry state when we got back.
The next morning we went to visit Parque Machia, a jungle wildlife reserve famous for it's community of monkeys rescued from the maltreatment of owners. They were loads of them, and they were very cute. One took a liking to Gail, and brought her a piece of banana whilst it sat and ate a piece of papaya on her shoulder. Having been warned not to take anything but ourselves beyond the park entrance, Gail had bought a disposable camera to snap the monkeys, but it had a good chew. Another fell in love with Jack and stubbornly hung on to his neck whilst we walked up to a viewpoint. It was clearly in a state of excitement (he was male, we could tell) and gave a jealous squeal if Jack prodded me or Gail. After about half an hour, Jack got sick of having a hot neck and tried to get rid of it, but he had to run from the little bugger who followed him up the path. Fortunately, we thought, it took interest in a little girl when we got to the mirador and climbed up her instead. But the girl panicked and the monkey bit her, quite deeply. We spent the next hour or so trying to keep the monkey, who was now rather agressive, away from her and from another little girl it bit about 10 minutes later, whilst Jack ran off to get help. The girl's family had to take her to hospital. I no longer wanted a monkey as a pet.
That afternoon we played a few games of pool in a bar, found a swimming pool and had a swim, and had a bit of dinner before heading back. The veggie restaurant was closed again, so I had to make do with an omlette. It took six hours to get back because rain had made the unsurfaced roads hazardous.
The next day I had a look at the photos of the nursery taken on Sunday before the others had left. It was almost unrecognisable. The cots, blankets and matresses had been cleaned and the walls were pink, yellow, blue and green, and free of rat poo. I felt a little guilty that I hadn't been there on the Saturday and Sunday, but they seemed to have done a good enough job without us.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
The Salt Flats, Sunsets and Shooting Stars
I'm getting rather behind with this blog. It's Tuesday 19 June today, and I went to Salar two weekends ago. Hopefully I can remember it accurately.
It was a long awaited trip. I'd had it penned in my diary since my first day with TAPA, when I managed to persuade Ximena to let me plan some time off to visit the salt flats on the condition that I write an article about it, and that we keep it a secret from the rest of the volunteers and director Daniela. Not much of a penalty really. We'd had a look on the calendar and decided that if I made use of the public holiday of Corpus Christi, on 7 June, I would only need to take one day off to do a full four-day tour.
Although I'd have been happy to go alone (I was kind of hoping to group up with some Israeli men...), I'd been half-heartedly suggesting to selected others that they take time off and join me. I didn't really think anyone would be able to, so I was very glad when Jack told me on the Monday that he'd managed to rearrange his Friday classes for Wednesday, which was "The Day of the Teacher", or in other words a day off for teachers. Having done very little research (I'd learnt my lesson from planning for La Paz last weekend), we left on Wednesday afternoon by bus to Uyuni via Oruro. The first bus was fine, if a little hotter and smellier than usual, but the second leg was an overnighter in a very shitty bus along one of the bumpiest roads I've ever experienced. We had to spend a good 10 minutes when we arrived searching for our things at the other end of the bus among the snoozing campesinos and their big bundles of God knows what. We'd been warned it got cold, so we'd taken our sleeping bags on board, and sure enough, by the early hours of the morning ice was forming on the insides of the windows. After a sleepless night, we arrived into the frigid, sleepy town of Uyuni at sunrise.
At 6.30, nothing was open in this tiny little place. We considered following the advice of the Lonely Planet and camping out in the office of the bus company for a while and taking advantage of their gas heater, but it was full of locals doing the same, so we decided to take a wander into "town". Before long, tour agencies were beginning to open their doors and agents were wandering the streets looking to prey on unprepared travellers. This suited us well. Under the premise of shopping around a bit, we accepted several invitations to come inside agency offices and take a seat in front of their gas heaters whilst they gave us their spiel. There's not a great deal of variation between the agencies, and we were to discover that most of them grouped their tourists together to fill the jeeps, but we knew we wanted to leave that Thursday morning on a 3 or 4-day tour that perhaps incorporated a bit of exercise and ideally in reverse so we got the long day of travelling out of the way first and had more time on the salt flats at the end. After seeing what numerous agencies had to offer, we we torn between a 3-day tour in reverse and a normal 4-day tour that included climbing a volcano. Over breakfast, in a deserted hostel canteen, we decided on the latter. We took a quick shower in another of the hostels (we weren't confident of having another chance for the next four days), had a quick wander round the market, and bought water and snacks, and then we were off. As we should have expected, the two Argentinian girls and two American guys with whom we shared a jeep, had booked through different agencies, but it didn't really matter.
First stop was the train graveyard, a strange place near the edge of the salt flats where a dozen or so old trains lay rusting. Jack quite liked it; Dad you'd have been very excited by it. I suppose the old wrecks did make for interesting photos. It didn't take long in the jeep before we were on the salt flats themselves. It was almost too soon to appreciate. We spent half an hour trying on daft hats in the artesan stalls and climbing the mountains of salt that had been piled up near a salt processing plant before driving to the middle of the Salar. We had a bit of time next to a field of evenly spaced-out pyramids of salt shovelled up to allow the salt to dry, each of which was surrounded by a perfect square of shallow water reflecting clearly the bright blue sky and fluffy clouds. We stopped for lunch at the Palacio de Sal, a hotel constructed entirely from salt, in the centre of the flats. The place is amazing; we didn't go for more than two minutes without a "wow" or two escaping our lips. Standing beneath a bright blue sky on a perfectly even, frozen sea of brilliant white salt stretching as far as the eye can see is a surreal, otherwordly experience, and difficult to describe. As we walked, the salt crunched satisfyingly with each step, and tinkled magically when shards were dislodged with a little kick. Inspired by photos taken by previous visitors that we'd seen (mainly on Facebook), we took advantage of the illusory landscape and attempted several perspective photos. I hung in miniature from Jack's finger, a tiny version of Jack stood on my shoulder and whispered into my ear, he held me in his hand, and we both sat in my walking boot. At one point, an aeroplane landed not far from where we were. Eating was an odd distraction; each time I looked up from my plate I was amazed anew by the incredible landscape. One of the Argentinian girls made the inevitable joke: "Is there any salt for the chips?"
It took several hours to reach the little hamlet where we were to spend our first night, across miles and miles of seemingly endless salt, which dries in curious perfectly tesselated hexagons. The hostel was, as described, very basic: metal beds, with blankets (thank God) but no heating, and only with electricity for about two hours between 7pm and 9pm. We headed out, well-wrapped up, past the herd of llamas and/or alpacas grazing near the hostel and the smelly pink flamingoes doing their thing on the water at the edge of the flats, to see the sun set over Salar. As the light faded, the sky turned from blue to pink, purple and orange, and the sun cast its vivid colours over the mountains in the distance and across the sea of frozen salt. All was reflected in the still water at the edge of the flats. It was beautiful. After dinner (including welcome bowl of hearty soup), we put on even more clothes, grabbed our torches, and braved the cold again to see the stars. Clambering over the stepping stones was a little trickier in the pitch blackness, but it was worth it. The night sky was not dark at all but twinkling with millions upon millions of stars, and it didn't take long to spot a few shooting stars. The Milky Way was unmissable; a broad cloudy smear across the sky. We lay on the salt for a while, gazing up, before the cold became unbearable and we got numb bums and had to go back inside.
Jack woke me up in the morning as my phone alarm hadn't gone off to wake me up in time for sunrise, but we made it outside before the sun had arrived from beyond the horizon. Although not quite as beautiful as the sunset, it was impressive. That morning we set off to explore Volcano Tunupa at whose based we had camped. We wandered into a cave in the mountainside where several shrivelled but well-preserved mummies sat curled up, before hiking up to a viewpoint with great vistas over the flats. This, apparently, was "climbing the volcano". We managed to hike a bit further before we had to return, but the terrain was less than ideal, involving trampling over very spiky and very painful hardy little shrubs. Waiting by the jeep, we thought we'd have to interrupt our philosophical discussions about animal rights, religion and such like to send a search party out for one of the Americans, who had gone off to hike up the volcano on his own, but he eventually turned up fine. We drove off across the salt flats again, this time to the Isla Pescado (Fish Island), a name I never quite understood as there were no fish to be seen. Rather, it was a rocky mound in the middle of the even white salt flats covered in giant San Pedro cacti. Entrepreneurial Bolivians had set up a shop, toilets and a restaurant, and planted a giant Bolivian flag on the top. We hiked round the mound and took a few more perspective photographs before our time was up and we had to board a different jeep and meet our new crew and travel buddies. The guide and cooks were much the same - slightly grumpy and not very talkative. We were now sharing a jeep with two middle-aged Austrian women, one a teacher and the other an executive, a friendly short-haird Hong Kong girl and a very quiet South Korean guy, both in their early 20s. We drove off again towards the little village of San Juan, amusing ourselves with a game of i-spy and taking photos through the windows of the Bolivian army who seemed to be doing training exercises in the middle of this barren nowhere.
San Juan is a cold, windy, brown-grey village which claims to have 1,000 inhabitants but surely can't be home to more than 200. Somehow it feels remeniscent of the wild west; I expected a Bolivian cowboy to swagger out of one of the houses into the street and say, "Oi, gringo, this town ain't big enough for the both of us". It really wasn't. We paid a visit to the tiny museum there, and in the eerie twilight explored the strange tombs of fossilized coral in which ancient mummies had been preserved, huddled up as if sheltering from the cold. Despite there being no more than about 4 streets in the place, we managed to get very lost on the way back to the 'hostel'. We were entertained during dinner (soup again, but this time a bottle of wine to share) by a group of local boys of perhaps 10 years old playing various musical instruments and singing poorly rehearsed songs. Bored, Jack and I headed out to find the bar featured in a well-read leaflet that had been thrusted into our hands on the way to the museum, advertised as the most happening place in the vollage. It took a fair bit of finding, and we were the only visitors that night. It was worth it for a few glasses of the vino caliente (hot spiced wine) and to hear the proprietor warble to Bolivian tunes on his Andean flute. It was cold that night.
The next day we drove through desert landscapes, fascinating rock formations and stopping at beautiful but austere lakes, snapping flamingos and vicuñas. One stop was at the famous Arbol de Piedra, or 'tree of rock', surely one of the most photographed rocks in South America. Dutifully, we got photos of that too. We stayed that night at the shores of Laguna Colorada, or 'coloured lake', so called because the algae in the water often makes it appear bright red. We watched another beautiful sunset, but the night was even colder than the previous nights, so even with twenty layers on we couldn't stay outside watching for shooting stars for more than 10 minutes. With six people in the dorm, the night was just about bearable. We had an early morning start the next morning, leaving the hostel at 5.30am, in order to reach the geysers just as the sun was rising. Despite the rotten-egg stench, standing in the sulphur-infused steam from the ferocious pools of boiling mud and water was actually quite pleasant given the freezing conditions. Not for the first time, I was reminded of Iceland, except for the absence of any safety cordons to prevent sleepy visitors wandering straight into these hellish holes in the earth. On we drove up to another lake, at the shores of which was a naturally heated bathing pool. Silly me had forgotten to pack my swimming costume, but Jack was brave enough to strip down to his trunks in the sub-zero temperatures and take his cup of tea down for a dip. He seemed to enjoy it enough for the both of us.
We stopped at several more lakes en route to the 'bus stop' for the bus to Chile, where we lost the two Austrians and the Hong Kong girl, but gained a lovely Swedish girl with green hair called Boel. She'd been studying in Val Paraiso, in Chile, and now had two weeks to travel round before returning home. She spent the day asking us questions about where we'd been in Bolivia, and wrote down all our recommendations. I think we've inadvertently planned her entire two weeks for her, even down to which hostels to stay in. We had lunch in another tiny adobe town whose most interesting feature was the tail end of an aeroplane perched up in the rocks that overshadowed the village. We arrived back into Uyuni in the early evening, but because of problems with my phone we ended up having to stay another night. I'd left my phone in the hostel at Laguna Colorada, and it had been sent back to Uyuni with another tour guide. He apparently had four or five wives and mistresses, and although we knew he was back in Uyuni we didn't know which woman he was with. We evenutally arranged to have my phone sent to me on a bus the next day, but by the time we got to the bus station there were no spaces left in the bus back that night, unless we wanted to sit in the aisles (which we really didn't). On the plus side, it meant I could collect my phone in person the next morning, the promiscous man having returned home. So we had to head back to Cochabamba on Monday, and finally arrived back early on Tuesday morning. We opted for bus cama ('bed' bus) thinking it would be more comfortable, but far from it. Although the seats reclined a long way back, the base of the seats themselves were positively sloping, so it was a constant fight to stop sliding off them. I thought Lord of the Rings would make insomnia slightly more tolerable, but it cut out half way through. To top it off, there were two babies sat in the seats in front and to the side, who wailed frequently and whose mothers insisted on changing them during the journey to let us all smell what the inside of a Bolivian nappy smells like. Ah, Bolivia.
It was a long awaited trip. I'd had it penned in my diary since my first day with TAPA, when I managed to persuade Ximena to let me plan some time off to visit the salt flats on the condition that I write an article about it, and that we keep it a secret from the rest of the volunteers and director Daniela. Not much of a penalty really. We'd had a look on the calendar and decided that if I made use of the public holiday of Corpus Christi, on 7 June, I would only need to take one day off to do a full four-day tour.
Although I'd have been happy to go alone (I was kind of hoping to group up with some Israeli men...), I'd been half-heartedly suggesting to selected others that they take time off and join me. I didn't really think anyone would be able to, so I was very glad when Jack told me on the Monday that he'd managed to rearrange his Friday classes for Wednesday, which was "The Day of the Teacher", or in other words a day off for teachers. Having done very little research (I'd learnt my lesson from planning for La Paz last weekend), we left on Wednesday afternoon by bus to Uyuni via Oruro. The first bus was fine, if a little hotter and smellier than usual, but the second leg was an overnighter in a very shitty bus along one of the bumpiest roads I've ever experienced. We had to spend a good 10 minutes when we arrived searching for our things at the other end of the bus among the snoozing campesinos and their big bundles of God knows what. We'd been warned it got cold, so we'd taken our sleeping bags on board, and sure enough, by the early hours of the morning ice was forming on the insides of the windows. After a sleepless night, we arrived into the frigid, sleepy town of Uyuni at sunrise.
At 6.30, nothing was open in this tiny little place. We considered following the advice of the Lonely Planet and camping out in the office of the bus company for a while and taking advantage of their gas heater, but it was full of locals doing the same, so we decided to take a wander into "town". Before long, tour agencies were beginning to open their doors and agents were wandering the streets looking to prey on unprepared travellers. This suited us well. Under the premise of shopping around a bit, we accepted several invitations to come inside agency offices and take a seat in front of their gas heaters whilst they gave us their spiel. There's not a great deal of variation between the agencies, and we were to discover that most of them grouped their tourists together to fill the jeeps, but we knew we wanted to leave that Thursday morning on a 3 or 4-day tour that perhaps incorporated a bit of exercise and ideally in reverse so we got the long day of travelling out of the way first and had more time on the salt flats at the end. After seeing what numerous agencies had to offer, we we torn between a 3-day tour in reverse and a normal 4-day tour that included climbing a volcano. Over breakfast, in a deserted hostel canteen, we decided on the latter. We took a quick shower in another of the hostels (we weren't confident of having another chance for the next four days), had a quick wander round the market, and bought water and snacks, and then we were off. As we should have expected, the two Argentinian girls and two American guys with whom we shared a jeep, had booked through different agencies, but it didn't really matter.
First stop was the train graveyard, a strange place near the edge of the salt flats where a dozen or so old trains lay rusting. Jack quite liked it; Dad you'd have been very excited by it. I suppose the old wrecks did make for interesting photos. It didn't take long in the jeep before we were on the salt flats themselves. It was almost too soon to appreciate. We spent half an hour trying on daft hats in the artesan stalls and climbing the mountains of salt that had been piled up near a salt processing plant before driving to the middle of the Salar. We had a bit of time next to a field of evenly spaced-out pyramids of salt shovelled up to allow the salt to dry, each of which was surrounded by a perfect square of shallow water reflecting clearly the bright blue sky and fluffy clouds. We stopped for lunch at the Palacio de Sal, a hotel constructed entirely from salt, in the centre of the flats. The place is amazing; we didn't go for more than two minutes without a "wow" or two escaping our lips. Standing beneath a bright blue sky on a perfectly even, frozen sea of brilliant white salt stretching as far as the eye can see is a surreal, otherwordly experience, and difficult to describe. As we walked, the salt crunched satisfyingly with each step, and tinkled magically when shards were dislodged with a little kick. Inspired by photos taken by previous visitors that we'd seen (mainly on Facebook), we took advantage of the illusory landscape and attempted several perspective photos. I hung in miniature from Jack's finger, a tiny version of Jack stood on my shoulder and whispered into my ear, he held me in his hand, and we both sat in my walking boot. At one point, an aeroplane landed not far from where we were. Eating was an odd distraction; each time I looked up from my plate I was amazed anew by the incredible landscape. One of the Argentinian girls made the inevitable joke: "Is there any salt for the chips?"
It took several hours to reach the little hamlet where we were to spend our first night, across miles and miles of seemingly endless salt, which dries in curious perfectly tesselated hexagons. The hostel was, as described, very basic: metal beds, with blankets (thank God) but no heating, and only with electricity for about two hours between 7pm and 9pm. We headed out, well-wrapped up, past the herd of llamas and/or alpacas grazing near the hostel and the smelly pink flamingoes doing their thing on the water at the edge of the flats, to see the sun set over Salar. As the light faded, the sky turned from blue to pink, purple and orange, and the sun cast its vivid colours over the mountains in the distance and across the sea of frozen salt. All was reflected in the still water at the edge of the flats. It was beautiful. After dinner (including welcome bowl of hearty soup), we put on even more clothes, grabbed our torches, and braved the cold again to see the stars. Clambering over the stepping stones was a little trickier in the pitch blackness, but it was worth it. The night sky was not dark at all but twinkling with millions upon millions of stars, and it didn't take long to spot a few shooting stars. The Milky Way was unmissable; a broad cloudy smear across the sky. We lay on the salt for a while, gazing up, before the cold became unbearable and we got numb bums and had to go back inside.
Jack woke me up in the morning as my phone alarm hadn't gone off to wake me up in time for sunrise, but we made it outside before the sun had arrived from beyond the horizon. Although not quite as beautiful as the sunset, it was impressive. That morning we set off to explore Volcano Tunupa at whose based we had camped. We wandered into a cave in the mountainside where several shrivelled but well-preserved mummies sat curled up, before hiking up to a viewpoint with great vistas over the flats. This, apparently, was "climbing the volcano". We managed to hike a bit further before we had to return, but the terrain was less than ideal, involving trampling over very spiky and very painful hardy little shrubs. Waiting by the jeep, we thought we'd have to interrupt our philosophical discussions about animal rights, religion and such like to send a search party out for one of the Americans, who had gone off to hike up the volcano on his own, but he eventually turned up fine. We drove off across the salt flats again, this time to the Isla Pescado (Fish Island), a name I never quite understood as there were no fish to be seen. Rather, it was a rocky mound in the middle of the even white salt flats covered in giant San Pedro cacti. Entrepreneurial Bolivians had set up a shop, toilets and a restaurant, and planted a giant Bolivian flag on the top. We hiked round the mound and took a few more perspective photographs before our time was up and we had to board a different jeep and meet our new crew and travel buddies. The guide and cooks were much the same - slightly grumpy and not very talkative. We were now sharing a jeep with two middle-aged Austrian women, one a teacher and the other an executive, a friendly short-haird Hong Kong girl and a very quiet South Korean guy, both in their early 20s. We drove off again towards the little village of San Juan, amusing ourselves with a game of i-spy and taking photos through the windows of the Bolivian army who seemed to be doing training exercises in the middle of this barren nowhere.
San Juan is a cold, windy, brown-grey village which claims to have 1,000 inhabitants but surely can't be home to more than 200. Somehow it feels remeniscent of the wild west; I expected a Bolivian cowboy to swagger out of one of the houses into the street and say, "Oi, gringo, this town ain't big enough for the both of us". It really wasn't. We paid a visit to the tiny museum there, and in the eerie twilight explored the strange tombs of fossilized coral in which ancient mummies had been preserved, huddled up as if sheltering from the cold. Despite there being no more than about 4 streets in the place, we managed to get very lost on the way back to the 'hostel'. We were entertained during dinner (soup again, but this time a bottle of wine to share) by a group of local boys of perhaps 10 years old playing various musical instruments and singing poorly rehearsed songs. Bored, Jack and I headed out to find the bar featured in a well-read leaflet that had been thrusted into our hands on the way to the museum, advertised as the most happening place in the vollage. It took a fair bit of finding, and we were the only visitors that night. It was worth it for a few glasses of the vino caliente (hot spiced wine) and to hear the proprietor warble to Bolivian tunes on his Andean flute. It was cold that night.
The next day we drove through desert landscapes, fascinating rock formations and stopping at beautiful but austere lakes, snapping flamingos and vicuñas. One stop was at the famous Arbol de Piedra, or 'tree of rock', surely one of the most photographed rocks in South America. Dutifully, we got photos of that too. We stayed that night at the shores of Laguna Colorada, or 'coloured lake', so called because the algae in the water often makes it appear bright red. We watched another beautiful sunset, but the night was even colder than the previous nights, so even with twenty layers on we couldn't stay outside watching for shooting stars for more than 10 minutes. With six people in the dorm, the night was just about bearable. We had an early morning start the next morning, leaving the hostel at 5.30am, in order to reach the geysers just as the sun was rising. Despite the rotten-egg stench, standing in the sulphur-infused steam from the ferocious pools of boiling mud and water was actually quite pleasant given the freezing conditions. Not for the first time, I was reminded of Iceland, except for the absence of any safety cordons to prevent sleepy visitors wandering straight into these hellish holes in the earth. On we drove up to another lake, at the shores of which was a naturally heated bathing pool. Silly me had forgotten to pack my swimming costume, but Jack was brave enough to strip down to his trunks in the sub-zero temperatures and take his cup of tea down for a dip. He seemed to enjoy it enough for the both of us.
We stopped at several more lakes en route to the 'bus stop' for the bus to Chile, where we lost the two Austrians and the Hong Kong girl, but gained a lovely Swedish girl with green hair called Boel. She'd been studying in Val Paraiso, in Chile, and now had two weeks to travel round before returning home. She spent the day asking us questions about where we'd been in Bolivia, and wrote down all our recommendations. I think we've inadvertently planned her entire two weeks for her, even down to which hostels to stay in. We had lunch in another tiny adobe town whose most interesting feature was the tail end of an aeroplane perched up in the rocks that overshadowed the village. We arrived back into Uyuni in the early evening, but because of problems with my phone we ended up having to stay another night. I'd left my phone in the hostel at Laguna Colorada, and it had been sent back to Uyuni with another tour guide. He apparently had four or five wives and mistresses, and although we knew he was back in Uyuni we didn't know which woman he was with. We evenutally arranged to have my phone sent to me on a bus the next day, but by the time we got to the bus station there were no spaces left in the bus back that night, unless we wanted to sit in the aisles (which we really didn't). On the plus side, it meant I could collect my phone in person the next morning, the promiscous man having returned home. So we had to head back to Cochabamba on Monday, and finally arrived back early on Tuesday morning. We opted for bus cama ('bed' bus) thinking it would be more comfortable, but far from it. Although the seats reclined a long way back, the base of the seats themselves were positively sloping, so it was a constant fight to stop sliding off them. I thought Lord of the Rings would make insomnia slightly more tolerable, but it cut out half way through. To top it off, there were two babies sat in the seats in front and to the side, who wailed frequently and whose mothers insisted on changing them during the journey to let us all smell what the inside of a Bolivian nappy smells like. Ah, Bolivia.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Nicky, Bolivian Festivals and surviving The Most Dangerous Road in the World
Last Sunday was El Día de la Madre, or Mothers Day, over here. I was in Potosí cycling to some hot springs, but dutifully I'd left a card and a box of Bolivia's finest chocolates (so the streetseller told me) for both Cristina (my host mum) and Vicky (my maid). To celebrate the occasion, TAPA organized a meal for all the host mums and their children on Monday night. It was very pleasant, I managed to hold a conversation about various things, though mainly politics (it always seems to revert to politics over here) in Spanish. Went out for a drink after with some of the volunteers, so was very tired for work the next day.
Nicky (fellow volunteer in Trujillo) came to Cochabamba on Thursday! It was really lovely to see her and catch up. She arrived late so we went straight out for a pizza and a beer (like the old times) and then met some of the gang in town. It was a huge crowd in Casablancas, including the Americans I've met a few times before who are volunteering building stone ovens for rural citizens, and two Dutch guys who have been sent over by their university to re-programme a robot arm that was sent to San Simon University of Cochabamba in 1987 and unused. Apparently they're on the lookout for uses to which to put their robot arm, so we had a giggle coming up with some ideas. One drink led to another, and since Nicky and I hadn't seen each other for aaages, we just had to go out. After trying out a club that seemed more like a big house than a public venue, except for the fireman's pole, we ended up in Pimientas. After an hour in Briazilian Coffee for some chocolate cake to finish off the night, it was about 5.30am when I got to bed, very drunk. Needless to say I didn't make it into work the next morning. Instead, I met up with Nicky for a very nice lunch before we went our own ways at the weekend. Whilst waiting for her sat on one of Cochabamba's plaza benches, a tall grey bearded gringo sat down next to me and started chatting to me. You do get some characters amongst global travellers, but he was pretty special. When I managed to redirect the conversation away from me and onto what he was doing in Cochabamba, he told me that he was persuing two lines of entrepreneurial business, one of which he saw as his calling, the other provided the funds to follow it. It turned out he was primarily an evangelist, preaching to any schools and universities that would let him about "human moral values" and spreading the word by distributing his book across the continent. He funded this mission of his through his second occupation as a "professional gambler". If he recognised the irony he failed to show it.
Nicky (fellow volunteer in Trujillo) came to Cochabamba on Thursday! It was really lovely to see her and catch up. She arrived late so we went straight out for a pizza and a beer (like the old times) and then met some of the gang in town. It was a huge crowd in Casablancas, including the Americans I've met a few times before who are volunteering building stone ovens for rural citizens, and two Dutch guys who have been sent over by their university to re-programme a robot arm that was sent to San Simon University of Cochabamba in 1987 and unused. Apparently they're on the lookout for uses to which to put their robot arm, so we had a giggle coming up with some ideas. One drink led to another, and since Nicky and I hadn't seen each other for aaages, we just had to go out. After trying out a club that seemed more like a big house than a public venue, except for the fireman's pole, we ended up in Pimientas. After an hour in Briazilian Coffee for some chocolate cake to finish off the night, it was about 5.30am when I got to bed, very drunk. Needless to say I didn't make it into work the next morning. Instead, I met up with Nicky for a very nice lunch before we went our own ways at the weekend. Whilst waiting for her sat on one of Cochabamba's plaza benches, a tall grey bearded gringo sat down next to me and started chatting to me. You do get some characters amongst global travellers, but he was pretty special. When I managed to redirect the conversation away from me and onto what he was doing in Cochabamba, he told me that he was persuing two lines of entrepreneurial business, one of which he saw as his calling, the other provided the funds to follow it. It turned out he was primarily an evangelist, preaching to any schools and universities that would let him about "human moral values" and spreading the word by distributing his book across the continent. He funded this mission of his through his second occupation as a "professional gambler". If he recognised the irony he failed to show it.
Unusually, I'd actually made plans for the weekend. I managed to persuade Dutch Charlotte and hilarious Irish Gail to join Jack and I on a visit to La Paz to mountain bike down "The Most Dangerous Road in the World" (according to US statistics), visit Tiahuanaco, Bolivia's best pre-colonial ruins, and see the festival of the Gran Poder. Whilst recovering from Thursday night I booked us a room in a hostel, places on the bike tour, and four bus tickets. I wish I hadn't; it was more trouble than it was worth. Apparently the bus tickets (at under $6 each) were too expensive for Charlotte, as was the cost of the bike tour, despite us agreeing that we'd rather pay a bit more to go with a company with a better reputation. She made no comment about the hostel, thankfully.
Typically, the bus was an hour or so late getting into La Paz on Saturday morning, and the roads were closed for preparations for the festival later, so I had to call the tour company and promise that we'd come as soon as we could. We got our equipment (motorcycle-style helmets, shiny overtrousers and flourescent visibility jackets, and gloves) and were loaded into a minibus to head up to the starting point. We were all very nervous. Apparently only a month or so ago a couple of Israelis had met their ends when they missed one of the many sharp corners biking down "The Death Road", as the road from La Cumbre (4640m) down some 3345m to Coroico (1,315m) is also known. The safety briefing wasn't reassuring. Fortunately, the first section of the road was asfalted, so I was able to get over my fears and enjoy the ride a bit more after a few minutes. The only problem was the weather, which was less than brilliant. It was misty, rainy and dusty - so either our sunglasses got speckled and fogged up, or it was a struggle to keep our eyes open to see the road. There were a few uphill bits too, which provided welcome relief from breaking and the opportunity to overtake the group of local guys from Cochabamba who'd been zooming down the roads at breakneck pace. The second half of the descent was unasfalted, and, especially given the weather, a lot more scary. If the weather had been with us we'd have had some awesome views. From the bleak, freezing, dramatic heights of the altiplano to the lush steamy vegetation of the cloud forest at Coroico, the scenery is spectacular. We could only take their word for it. Instead, we could just about make out the edges of the road, and before long were drenched in mud and rain. But we all loved it, all 5 or 6 hours of adrenaline and exhilaration. Even Charlotte had fun, I think.
Making it back to our hostel was a challenge and a half. By the time we got back to La Paz the festival was in full swing. I'm not sure exactly what it celebrates, but it's something to do with the coming of Jesus I believe, despite what my host father says about it being a pagan fiesta. There were drunk campesinos staggering around everywhere, it was very amusing. Not so amusing was having to wait in a queue for about half an hour to cross the street because of the processions. We finally made it to the festival, which originally had been Jack's reason for coming to La Paz this weekend, at about 11pm, after much-anticipated showers and a pizza. It was a strange feeling to eat with a group of friends in the same restaurant in which about a month earlier I had eaten alone, with my book, unsure of what was to come. Good pizza though. The festival was very impressive. It was really cold, but we resisted it for a good few hours to watch the colourfully clad participants dance past, sometimes wearing little more than underwear. Some of the costumes were amazingly elaborate. Some were dressed as the devil, with masks and headresses, others were dressed formally in suits playing instruments in bands; some were well-composed and impressive, others were downright wasted. That said, some of the costumes were so heavy that even the sober dancers were struggling to stay upright. The costumes of some of the dancers are so valuable that they are protected by bodyguards against robbery. One lady on the news admitted that the jewels she was wearing were worth some 6 million Bolivianos. We didn't just watch either - various dancers dragged us off, in our ski-jackets and woolly hats, to dance in the parade.
The next morning we said goodbye to Charlotte before catching a micro to Tiahuanaco. Despite leaving our hostel at about 8am, we only got to Tiahuanaco at about 2 in the afternoon, after much dawdling in the busy market streets of La Paz. They might be Bolivia's best pre-colonial ruins, but the Lonely Planet was right to say that if you've been to Peru you'll be a little disappointed. We didn't even manage to have fun finding a guide. We were planning to audition the numerous candidates that the Lonely Planet promised would be queuing up to take us round - "Gu-idol", you could have called it - but we struggled to find even one. Nevertheless, it was a fun afternoon, if a little long. We had an entertaining return journey watching Gail tease a very cute and very happy little Bolivian kid, who was fascinated with her i-pod headphones. It was quite an effort to stop her trying to eat them instead of listen to the music coming out of them, but when she finally figured it out she was entranced. We were shown two sides to the Bolivian attitude to tourist on the way back. The choffer of the bus tried to overcharge us, probably thinking he could take advantage of our ignorance, but the father of the little girl we'd befriended insisted that he give us the change we were due, and various other Bolivian passengers asked us if we'd been charged the right price too. I can't imagine that happening on the train in England.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Primitive Mines, Disembowelled Llamas and Hot Springs
I had another fantastic spontaneous trip this weekend. This time it was Potosí, an old colonial mining town up at some 4,200m in the Bolivian altiplano.
At about 6pm on Friday, Jack and I (we couldn't persuade anyone else at such short notice) decided we didn't want to stay in Cochabamba, so managed to pack our bags and catch another overnight bus an hour or so later. This one was twelve hours, and it was even colder than previously. Thanks to the chilly temperatures, wailing babies, and an hour long stop with the doors open and lights on at about 3am in the morning, we arrived into the bus terminal on no more than 3 hours of sleep just after sunrise. A glorious sunrise, so Jack told me, but I was enjoying a rare 20 minutes of sleep at the time.
At about 6pm on Friday, Jack and I (we couldn't persuade anyone else at such short notice) decided we didn't want to stay in Cochabamba, so managed to pack our bags and catch another overnight bus an hour or so later. This one was twelve hours, and it was even colder than previously. Thanks to the chilly temperatures, wailing babies, and an hour long stop with the doors open and lights on at about 3am in the morning, we arrived into the bus terminal on no more than 3 hours of sleep just after sunrise. A glorious sunrise, so Jack told me, but I was enjoying a rare 20 minutes of sleep at the time.
Located in an otherwise unattractive area of Bolivia, barren highlands where little vegetation is able to flourish, the main attraction of Potosí are the mines, dug deep into a dusty red cerro (hill) that overlooks the town. Potosi was very sleepy so early in the morning, but we managed to check into a hostel and (after being misdirected several times) locate the tour agency with the best reputation for taking people down the mines, Koala Tours (surely set up by an Aussie expat but we never met him). After hearing some horrific descriptions of what was in store, we decided we'd rather pay that little bit more and be safe. Still a little dazed and sleepy from the journey, after grabbing a quick breakfast we signed the rather perturbing disclaimer that we accept fully the risks involved (including deaths from collapsing tunnels, gas poisoning, these sorts of things) and jumped on the tour minibus. First stop was the storehouse of Koala Tours to get kitted out in our mining gear. We did look very sexy in huge overpants and shiny overcoats, topped off by bright yellow hard hats and headlamps powered by giant orange batterys attached to the belts around our waists. Oh, and wellies. We decided to invest in handkerchiefs to put over our mouths and noses to avoid breathing in too much of the arsenic, cyanide and God knows what other toxic gases fill the mine tunnels.
Next stop was the miners' market. The markets were much like those in other Bolivian cities, full of campesinos selling their lotions and potions and wierd good luck charms, but with locally specific extras such as gas masks, dynamite, 95% proof alcohol, and a few decorated llamas awaiting sacrifice. It turned out that we'd chosen to visit Potosí during the annual festival celebrating Pachamama, or Mother Earth, which involved, as well as the inevitable copious drinking, lots of llama sacrificing. Jack and I bought some of the alcohol and dynamite to make the visit a little more exciting, and wandered round trying to avoid thinking about what was going to happen to the poor llamas. Before starting the long windy ascent up the Cerro Rico to the mines, we had a tour round the unbelievably primitive factories where the silver and other minerals are seperated from the crap that comes with them. Much like what was to come, everything was dirty and ancient, and looked like a death trap; it felt like stepping back into the early years of the industrial revolution. I found it almost impossible to believe that one of the world's most important mining towns (at one point, albeit at least a hundred years ago or so, it produced some 50% of the worlds precious minerals) had such antique processing plants.
After a brief discussion about what was going to happen, we finally pulled up our handkerchiefs over our mouths, turned on our headlamps, and entered the mines. It was one of the grimmest hours of my life, and it felt more like 10. The mine shafts are crudely dug out of the hill as if by hand, and it takes enormous concentration to ensure you don't trip over the uneven floor or bash your head on the still more uneven ceilings or the bits of wood or cable protruding from them. Poor Jack, at over 6ft, struggled rather, to say the least. Breathing was the greatest challenge down there. I can't imagine how an asthmatic claustrophobic would cope. Well, they wouldn't. The principle tunnels were bad enough, but the tunnels linking one "level" to another were appalling. We had to get on our hands and knees and crawl in many sections, at very steep gradients. At one point we had to slide on our bums some 20m down a near vertical shaft, trying to avoid the nails in the wood floor. Outside the mines, due to the altitude, it was freezing, but deeper inside the hill it began to get very hot. Temperatues reach 35 degrees centigrade in parts. To say we were uncomfortable in our well-layered thermals and fleeces would be a gross understatement. Consider also the near total darkness, the clouds of toxic dust that clogged up every tunnel, plus the double-foldedhandkerchief that we had to clutch to our mouths to breathe through, and all this at an altitude of well over 4000m, to which we were definitely unacclimatised, and you still can't imagine how miserable it was. Had I had enough breath to talk I might have asked to be taken back out. The poor miners. They still work in there. Incredible.
Finally I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. With immense relief I felt the air get cooler and fresher as we stumbled towards daylight again. But leaving the stifling heat, dust and darkness of the mines and coming face to face with what was going on outside was like being saved from the frying pan only to be thrust into the fire. Still half awake after so little sleep, and probably slightly intoxicated and oxygen-deprived, it took a while to register what we were seeing. It certainly took a few seconds to realize that what looked like bright red paint, collected in hard hats, running in streams towards the mines, and daubed everywhere, was actually blood. Upside down right in the entrance to the mine shaft, with their necks slit and their legs sprawled apart to allow for the disection to take place, were three huge dead llamas, and all around them, if not getting ready to disembowel the poor beasts, Bolivians were chatting and drinking. I thought I'd be a lot more traumatised than I was to see the scene of a massacre. Perhaps I was still dazed from the previous 14 hours or so. Though I think we were fortunate not to witness the actual slaughter itself. The revellers (!) motioned for us to take a seat, less than a meter away from one of the corpses, and handed us a beer to share. And then the shots came round. So, this Saturday morning, we sat and drank whilst right in front of us the men of Potosí proceeded to cut open three beautiful dead llamas and slowly extract their innards and shovel them into a cardboard box. If I had ever wanted a biology lesson on the physical composition of cameloids, I was getting a real treat. I'd never before seen every single organ, in real life, of an animal so close without it being on television. But I'd never been that keen on biology. Instead I was simultaneously repulsed yet irresistably compelled to watch this grotesque spectacle unfold. And the beer was quite refreshing. We sat there for a while, in a semi-trance, taking lots of photos and saying "eeuggh" and other remarks of disgust, to somehow make us feel better about taking part in the festivities.
Eventually, with all three llamas completely disembowelled, our tour guide said it was time to leave. We wandered accross the hillside, past some more Potosí men digging graves for the llamas (for good luck in the mines in the next year), and past some others cooking potatoes in hand-built stone ovens. Before we left, our guide Roland took our stick of dynamite and we had our photos taken holding the crude bomb whilst the fuse burnt down the stem.
The events of the morning didn't stop Jack ordering roast llama for lunch. He quite enjoyed it too.
That afternoon we walked round the city, wandering through the colonial plazas and along steep, narrow cobbled streets in search of the churches whose spires we spotted over the red rooftops. We didn't have the energy for the Casa de Moneda (literally House of Coins, a museum located in a beautiful colonial mansion), which my family considers a crime. Instead, we discovered that for the price of a cup of tea in the cafe of a cathedral-like building on the main plaza, the proprieter would move aside the wrought iron gate from the entrace to a narrow stairway and let us climb up onto the roof. Coincidentally, we'd timed it perfectly; the sun was just setting. From atop of one of the highest buildings in Potosí, we got some awesome views of the city skyline against the pink and orange skies. I'm glad health and safety standards aren't so strict over here.
We both slept like logs that night. After, that is, I had to climb in through the bathroom window of our room to let us in. Our roommates had left with the only key. The next day, again with Koala Tours (we ate breakfast and lunch in their cafe, slept in their hostel, and went on their tours - they got a lot of our money this weekend), we hired mountain bikes and cycled some 25km to the aguas termales, or hot springs, of Tarapaya. The ride was great - mostly downhill, but then it didn't take much uphill to get us panting like dogs in the Sahara. The lake was beautiful, and a little surreal. It was surprisingly big, and higher up than most of the land around, so I wondered how come the water didn't somehow filter down and drain the lake. The water was warm without being too hot; very pleasant, if a little cloudy.
Unfortunately we couldn't get a bus to Cochabamba earlier than 7.30pm that evening, so we arrived back, after another sleepless night shivering under a sleeping bag on the bus, just in time for a shower and a quick breakfast before work on Monday. I arrived home to find the floor of my room covered in ants. Nice.
Next stop was the miners' market. The markets were much like those in other Bolivian cities, full of campesinos selling their lotions and potions and wierd good luck charms, but with locally specific extras such as gas masks, dynamite, 95% proof alcohol, and a few decorated llamas awaiting sacrifice. It turned out that we'd chosen to visit Potosí during the annual festival celebrating Pachamama, or Mother Earth, which involved, as well as the inevitable copious drinking, lots of llama sacrificing. Jack and I bought some of the alcohol and dynamite to make the visit a little more exciting, and wandered round trying to avoid thinking about what was going to happen to the poor llamas. Before starting the long windy ascent up the Cerro Rico to the mines, we had a tour round the unbelievably primitive factories where the silver and other minerals are seperated from the crap that comes with them. Much like what was to come, everything was dirty and ancient, and looked like a death trap; it felt like stepping back into the early years of the industrial revolution. I found it almost impossible to believe that one of the world's most important mining towns (at one point, albeit at least a hundred years ago or so, it produced some 50% of the worlds precious minerals) had such antique processing plants.
After a brief discussion about what was going to happen, we finally pulled up our handkerchiefs over our mouths, turned on our headlamps, and entered the mines. It was one of the grimmest hours of my life, and it felt more like 10. The mine shafts are crudely dug out of the hill as if by hand, and it takes enormous concentration to ensure you don't trip over the uneven floor or bash your head on the still more uneven ceilings or the bits of wood or cable protruding from them. Poor Jack, at over 6ft, struggled rather, to say the least. Breathing was the greatest challenge down there. I can't imagine how an asthmatic claustrophobic would cope. Well, they wouldn't. The principle tunnels were bad enough, but the tunnels linking one "level" to another were appalling. We had to get on our hands and knees and crawl in many sections, at very steep gradients. At one point we had to slide on our bums some 20m down a near vertical shaft, trying to avoid the nails in the wood floor. Outside the mines, due to the altitude, it was freezing, but deeper inside the hill it began to get very hot. Temperatues reach 35 degrees centigrade in parts. To say we were uncomfortable in our well-layered thermals and fleeces would be a gross understatement. Consider also the near total darkness, the clouds of toxic dust that clogged up every tunnel, plus the double-foldedhandkerchief that we had to clutch to our mouths to breathe through, and all this at an altitude of well over 4000m, to which we were definitely unacclimatised, and you still can't imagine how miserable it was. Had I had enough breath to talk I might have asked to be taken back out. The poor miners. They still work in there. Incredible.
Finally I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. With immense relief I felt the air get cooler and fresher as we stumbled towards daylight again. But leaving the stifling heat, dust and darkness of the mines and coming face to face with what was going on outside was like being saved from the frying pan only to be thrust into the fire. Still half awake after so little sleep, and probably slightly intoxicated and oxygen-deprived, it took a while to register what we were seeing. It certainly took a few seconds to realize that what looked like bright red paint, collected in hard hats, running in streams towards the mines, and daubed everywhere, was actually blood. Upside down right in the entrance to the mine shaft, with their necks slit and their legs sprawled apart to allow for the disection to take place, were three huge dead llamas, and all around them, if not getting ready to disembowel the poor beasts, Bolivians were chatting and drinking. I thought I'd be a lot more traumatised than I was to see the scene of a massacre. Perhaps I was still dazed from the previous 14 hours or so. Though I think we were fortunate not to witness the actual slaughter itself. The revellers (!) motioned for us to take a seat, less than a meter away from one of the corpses, and handed us a beer to share. And then the shots came round. So, this Saturday morning, we sat and drank whilst right in front of us the men of Potosí proceeded to cut open three beautiful dead llamas and slowly extract their innards and shovel them into a cardboard box. If I had ever wanted a biology lesson on the physical composition of cameloids, I was getting a real treat. I'd never before seen every single organ, in real life, of an animal so close without it being on television. But I'd never been that keen on biology. Instead I was simultaneously repulsed yet irresistably compelled to watch this grotesque spectacle unfold. And the beer was quite refreshing. We sat there for a while, in a semi-trance, taking lots of photos and saying "eeuggh" and other remarks of disgust, to somehow make us feel better about taking part in the festivities.
Eventually, with all three llamas completely disembowelled, our tour guide said it was time to leave. We wandered accross the hillside, past some more Potosí men digging graves for the llamas (for good luck in the mines in the next year), and past some others cooking potatoes in hand-built stone ovens. Before we left, our guide Roland took our stick of dynamite and we had our photos taken holding the crude bomb whilst the fuse burnt down the stem.
The events of the morning didn't stop Jack ordering roast llama for lunch. He quite enjoyed it too.
That afternoon we walked round the city, wandering through the colonial plazas and along steep, narrow cobbled streets in search of the churches whose spires we spotted over the red rooftops. We didn't have the energy for the Casa de Moneda (literally House of Coins, a museum located in a beautiful colonial mansion), which my family considers a crime. Instead, we discovered that for the price of a cup of tea in the cafe of a cathedral-like building on the main plaza, the proprieter would move aside the wrought iron gate from the entrace to a narrow stairway and let us climb up onto the roof. Coincidentally, we'd timed it perfectly; the sun was just setting. From atop of one of the highest buildings in Potosí, we got some awesome views of the city skyline against the pink and orange skies. I'm glad health and safety standards aren't so strict over here.
We both slept like logs that night. After, that is, I had to climb in through the bathroom window of our room to let us in. Our roommates had left with the only key. The next day, again with Koala Tours (we ate breakfast and lunch in their cafe, slept in their hostel, and went on their tours - they got a lot of our money this weekend), we hired mountain bikes and cycled some 25km to the aguas termales, or hot springs, of Tarapaya. The ride was great - mostly downhill, but then it didn't take much uphill to get us panting like dogs in the Sahara. The lake was beautiful, and a little surreal. It was surprisingly big, and higher up than most of the land around, so I wondered how come the water didn't somehow filter down and drain the lake. The water was warm without being too hot; very pleasant, if a little cloudy.
Unfortunately we couldn't get a bus to Cochabamba earlier than 7.30pm that evening, so we arrived back, after another sleepless night shivering under a sleeping bag on the bus, just in time for a shower and a quick breakfast before work on Monday. I arrived home to find the floor of my room covered in ants. Nice.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Lots and Lots
I just don't where to start on this one really, there's so much I want to put in. I guess a good place to start is last weekend. I took advantage of the civic strike on Friday (no transport, no shops open, road blocks everywhere - therefore no work) to visit Lake Titicaca, since it's quite a long way from Cochabamba and takes two buses and a good 13 hours to get there.
I was torn about what do do on Thursday night. I seriously contemplated sticking around, going in to Los Tiempos (the Bolivian newspaper I'm working with in the mornings, very highly rated nationally, I might add) and persuading the photographers to let me go with them to take photos. I had a little daydream of making my name as a journalist with my story and pictures of international-headline-worthy riots and violence, as there were in January (and as some people had been predicting). In the end, I decided: (a) it would be a bit risky to put myself in the middle of such things, since there's a fair amount of hostility to gringos at the moment given the tension with the US over coca (as well as other factors); (b) it would probably blow over peacefully and barely make national news, and if it was bigger, I could always get in on the act when I got back; and (c), it was too good an opportunity to miss to travel to Titicaca, since I wouldn't have another opportunity.
That night (I called them at about 7pm) I managed to persuade two other volunteers to pack their bags and head to the bus station at 9pm for an overnight bus to La Paz. Eleanor and Jack are both pre-uni gappers, from posh schools, and bonded well over rowing chat. We had a bit of time to spare before our bus at 10.30 so we went for a wander round the area, and came across a funfairn that looked like the attractions were built in the 1930s. We had a few games of table football (for the cost of 20 centavos, less than 2p) on a delapidated table before spotting a great big slide. The climb up the rickety stairs was almost as nerve-wracking as the descent. After a few goes and a lot of laughs, we headed over to the park's biggest attraction, the "rollercoaster". Even without loop-the-loops it was one of the scariest rides I've been on. It was so noisy and old, but actually quite fast. A very entertaining hour, for the cost of about 50p in total.
The bus journey was less fun. Turned out Eleanor hadn't quite recovered from some uncategorised illness she'd been suffering, and on top of that gets quite car sick, so had a very uncomfortable journey. So did I, sitting next to the poor thing whinging away whilst trying to sleep, but I did feel very sorry for her. Was quite funny when she got uncontrollable hiccups though. We had to change at La Paz at about 7am in the morning, and finally arrived in Copacabana (not the Copacabana of the song, but that didn't stop Barry Manilow getting stuck in my head for the entire journey - very frustrating when all I knew was that one word) at about 12.30. The bus was quite an adventure. We had to cross the lake half way through, which involved us all getting out to take a little boat over the channel whilst the bus (presumably too heavy and dangerous with us all on board) was ferried across on another. At the other side, next to the headquarters of the Bolivian Navy no less, we had to pass through "migration" (despite being a long way from any border), where Eleanor and Jack had to pay 150Bs each to bribe the official to let them pass, having both forgotten their passports. Apparently a copy was not enough. For once in my life I was the only one to have remembered to bring something!
Although perhaps not for poor Eleanor, who never felt well for the entire duration, for me it was a great weekend. Titicaca is just stunning. But what makes it all the more impressive is remembering that such a huge lake, which stretches as far as the eye can see, is located at an altitude of 3,800m. And of the altitude you cannot forget, thanks to the scarcity of oxygen that makes climbing even a single flight of stairs a superhuman effort. The first day we took a swan-shaped pedalo onto the lake (bloody hard work, we didn't get very far) and wandered round the little town. It's very touristy, with gringos in gringo trousers and alpaca jumpers (me now included) everywhere, but it's also really cute. The cathedral is very impressive for such a small place. Towards the evening we hiked up a little hill (yes it was a hike at that alitude; we had to do a lot of persuading to get Eleanor to the top) for some famously lovely views of the sunset over the lake. The colours were beautiful. The next day, we took a boat over to the Isla del Sol. It's a beautiful yet somehow bleak little island, affording some amazing views across the lake to the snow-capped mountains beyond. We hiked (poor Eleanor) from the north to the south of the island. When away from the ports at either end, it feels very remote, and despite the brilliant sunshine still felt chilly with the altitude. According to legend, this is where the sun was born, and it certainly is strong. It's also supposedly the birthplace of the Incas. There are correspondingly some very impressive Inca ruins, as well as a couple of rocks that, according to legend (we failed to see it) are shaped like a puma and a frog. The island is a hotspot for tourists too: we were entertained along some of the way by a multicoloured gringo playing his Andean flute, and bought water from some little entrepreneureal kiosks dotted along the route. Out of sympathy for Eleanor, who was desperate for some sleep, we took the bus back during the day on Sunday and spent a couple of hours in La Paz, taking in the lovely old centre and the amusing coca museum again. The journey back wasn't so bad, there were a few films to entertain us and Eleanor coped much better. The toilets were gross though - but so was the Ladies in the bus terminal, which, no joke, is called the mingitorio.
Turns out that on Friday there were roadblocks and some demonstrations, but generally it was fairly peaceful. It didn't make international news, that I'm aware of. It would have been exciting to have been with the journalists covering it, but I think I did the right thing. There are always demos going on of some form or another, Bolivians are great at organising themselves. Guess it helps that there are loads of peasants without permanent jobs and therefore with time on their hands to demonstrate. It seems to work too, especially with such a lefty man-of-the-people president, Evo Morales, in power at the moment. Last week there were loads of disabled campesinos demanding more help and support from the government - and on Wednesday the government agreed to help them. Sounds great from a social perspective, but surely this kind of approach only encourages more groups to strike...? Ah well, makes things more interesting for tourists like me!
I feel bad about complaining about gappers. They're all very lovely. There are also now much fewer of us - in the week after I arrived about half of them all left. Besides Eleanor and Jack, there are perhaps 8 other volunteers with TAPA, and a few extras that the volunteers have got to know, most of whom I met last Tuesday night. I met one really cool guy my age, Alexis, but he's gone off to a little town in the jungle for his project. A good excuse to visit one weekend though! There are two others on the same project as me: Lamin, a crazy 25 year old drifter, and Melanie, a 27 year old professional economic journalist. Lamin doesn't have much Spanish, so it's just me and Melanie at Los Tiempos. At first I was a bit disappointed that Melanie's getting to write articles and do interviews for Los Tiempos (thanks to her professional experience) whilst I've been sent to the photography department, but now I'm actually quite glad. The photographers are great fun, always making jokes, and I've been out to various press conferences (including one held by the key opposition party Podemos, immediately before which I made the fatal mistake of failing to kiss the speaker on the cheek when introduced; very embarrasing) and the site of a road accident. Today one of the photographers took me to an event in the central plaza which unfortunately had all finished when we got there, so instead we wandered round some artesan markets and an art exhibitionhe gave me some coaching in taking photos, which was very cool.
Meanwhile, for the English Cochabanner, besides making sense of articles comically badly translated from Spanish, I've conducted my first ever interview. I met with the American (North American, that is) director of a charity MedioAmbiente Bolivia to chat about their work and their new radio show. It was great fun, and really interesting, especially given my interest in environmental issues. She even claimed to be impressed with me. I'm working on the article at the moment for next month's issue. I've got another interview tomorrow with the director of a charity that works with people with AIDS. Unfortunately this woman is pure Bolivian I think, so entirely in Spanish. I am scared. I'm not sure whether my Spanish is up to it! I found this charity through a girl called Jen who works here teaching English as well as volunteering with this charity every Monday to give Reiki to the AIDS sufferers. She's a former TAPA volunteer (4 years ago in her gap year, when she had crazy dreadlocks) who loved it so much she had to come back. She comes to my family's house for lunch every day, which is really nice.
It also turns out that there are in fact decent gyms in Cochabamba, so, as I promised myself I would, I joined. It's very modern and really big (it's even got fingerprint recognition instead of membership cards for entry!), but unfortunately, like the rest of Bolivian society, it's very male-oriented. The weights room is huge, but there are only about 10 cardio machines, and it gets very busy. But it does the job, and for about 10 English pounds for a months unlimited membership it's not bad. The only thing is that with working in the mornings and the afternoons, my Spanish classes till 6, AND going to the gym afterwards, I just have no time! But then that's the way I like it I guess!
I was torn about what do do on Thursday night. I seriously contemplated sticking around, going in to Los Tiempos (the Bolivian newspaper I'm working with in the mornings, very highly rated nationally, I might add) and persuading the photographers to let me go with them to take photos. I had a little daydream of making my name as a journalist with my story and pictures of international-headline-worthy riots and violence, as there were in January (and as some people had been predicting). In the end, I decided: (a) it would be a bit risky to put myself in the middle of such things, since there's a fair amount of hostility to gringos at the moment given the tension with the US over coca (as well as other factors); (b) it would probably blow over peacefully and barely make national news, and if it was bigger, I could always get in on the act when I got back; and (c), it was too good an opportunity to miss to travel to Titicaca, since I wouldn't have another opportunity.
That night (I called them at about 7pm) I managed to persuade two other volunteers to pack their bags and head to the bus station at 9pm for an overnight bus to La Paz. Eleanor and Jack are both pre-uni gappers, from posh schools, and bonded well over rowing chat. We had a bit of time to spare before our bus at 10.30 so we went for a wander round the area, and came across a funfairn that looked like the attractions were built in the 1930s. We had a few games of table football (for the cost of 20 centavos, less than 2p) on a delapidated table before spotting a great big slide. The climb up the rickety stairs was almost as nerve-wracking as the descent. After a few goes and a lot of laughs, we headed over to the park's biggest attraction, the "rollercoaster". Even without loop-the-loops it was one of the scariest rides I've been on. It was so noisy and old, but actually quite fast. A very entertaining hour, for the cost of about 50p in total.
The bus journey was less fun. Turned out Eleanor hadn't quite recovered from some uncategorised illness she'd been suffering, and on top of that gets quite car sick, so had a very uncomfortable journey. So did I, sitting next to the poor thing whinging away whilst trying to sleep, but I did feel very sorry for her. Was quite funny when she got uncontrollable hiccups though. We had to change at La Paz at about 7am in the morning, and finally arrived in Copacabana (not the Copacabana of the song, but that didn't stop Barry Manilow getting stuck in my head for the entire journey - very frustrating when all I knew was that one word) at about 12.30. The bus was quite an adventure. We had to cross the lake half way through, which involved us all getting out to take a little boat over the channel whilst the bus (presumably too heavy and dangerous with us all on board) was ferried across on another. At the other side, next to the headquarters of the Bolivian Navy no less, we had to pass through "migration" (despite being a long way from any border), where Eleanor and Jack had to pay 150Bs each to bribe the official to let them pass, having both forgotten their passports. Apparently a copy was not enough. For once in my life I was the only one to have remembered to bring something!
Although perhaps not for poor Eleanor, who never felt well for the entire duration, for me it was a great weekend. Titicaca is just stunning. But what makes it all the more impressive is remembering that such a huge lake, which stretches as far as the eye can see, is located at an altitude of 3,800m. And of the altitude you cannot forget, thanks to the scarcity of oxygen that makes climbing even a single flight of stairs a superhuman effort. The first day we took a swan-shaped pedalo onto the lake (bloody hard work, we didn't get very far) and wandered round the little town. It's very touristy, with gringos in gringo trousers and alpaca jumpers (me now included) everywhere, but it's also really cute. The cathedral is very impressive for such a small place. Towards the evening we hiked up a little hill (yes it was a hike at that alitude; we had to do a lot of persuading to get Eleanor to the top) for some famously lovely views of the sunset over the lake. The colours were beautiful. The next day, we took a boat over to the Isla del Sol. It's a beautiful yet somehow bleak little island, affording some amazing views across the lake to the snow-capped mountains beyond. We hiked (poor Eleanor) from the north to the south of the island. When away from the ports at either end, it feels very remote, and despite the brilliant sunshine still felt chilly with the altitude. According to legend, this is where the sun was born, and it certainly is strong. It's also supposedly the birthplace of the Incas. There are correspondingly some very impressive Inca ruins, as well as a couple of rocks that, according to legend (we failed to see it) are shaped like a puma and a frog. The island is a hotspot for tourists too: we were entertained along some of the way by a multicoloured gringo playing his Andean flute, and bought water from some little entrepreneureal kiosks dotted along the route. Out of sympathy for Eleanor, who was desperate for some sleep, we took the bus back during the day on Sunday and spent a couple of hours in La Paz, taking in the lovely old centre and the amusing coca museum again. The journey back wasn't so bad, there were a few films to entertain us and Eleanor coped much better. The toilets were gross though - but so was the Ladies in the bus terminal, which, no joke, is called the mingitorio.
Turns out that on Friday there were roadblocks and some demonstrations, but generally it was fairly peaceful. It didn't make international news, that I'm aware of. It would have been exciting to have been with the journalists covering it, but I think I did the right thing. There are always demos going on of some form or another, Bolivians are great at organising themselves. Guess it helps that there are loads of peasants without permanent jobs and therefore with time on their hands to demonstrate. It seems to work too, especially with such a lefty man-of-the-people president, Evo Morales, in power at the moment. Last week there were loads of disabled campesinos demanding more help and support from the government - and on Wednesday the government agreed to help them. Sounds great from a social perspective, but surely this kind of approach only encourages more groups to strike...? Ah well, makes things more interesting for tourists like me!
I feel bad about complaining about gappers. They're all very lovely. There are also now much fewer of us - in the week after I arrived about half of them all left. Besides Eleanor and Jack, there are perhaps 8 other volunteers with TAPA, and a few extras that the volunteers have got to know, most of whom I met last Tuesday night. I met one really cool guy my age, Alexis, but he's gone off to a little town in the jungle for his project. A good excuse to visit one weekend though! There are two others on the same project as me: Lamin, a crazy 25 year old drifter, and Melanie, a 27 year old professional economic journalist. Lamin doesn't have much Spanish, so it's just me and Melanie at Los Tiempos. At first I was a bit disappointed that Melanie's getting to write articles and do interviews for Los Tiempos (thanks to her professional experience) whilst I've been sent to the photography department, but now I'm actually quite glad. The photographers are great fun, always making jokes, and I've been out to various press conferences (including one held by the key opposition party Podemos, immediately before which I made the fatal mistake of failing to kiss the speaker on the cheek when introduced; very embarrasing) and the site of a road accident. Today one of the photographers took me to an event in the central plaza which unfortunately had all finished when we got there, so instead we wandered round some artesan markets and an art exhibitionhe gave me some coaching in taking photos, which was very cool.
Meanwhile, for the English Cochabanner, besides making sense of articles comically badly translated from Spanish, I've conducted my first ever interview. I met with the American (North American, that is) director of a charity MedioAmbiente Bolivia to chat about their work and their new radio show. It was great fun, and really interesting, especially given my interest in environmental issues. She even claimed to be impressed with me. I'm working on the article at the moment for next month's issue. I've got another interview tomorrow with the director of a charity that works with people with AIDS. Unfortunately this woman is pure Bolivian I think, so entirely in Spanish. I am scared. I'm not sure whether my Spanish is up to it! I found this charity through a girl called Jen who works here teaching English as well as volunteering with this charity every Monday to give Reiki to the AIDS sufferers. She's a former TAPA volunteer (4 years ago in her gap year, when she had crazy dreadlocks) who loved it so much she had to come back. She comes to my family's house for lunch every day, which is really nice.
It also turns out that there are in fact decent gyms in Cochabamba, so, as I promised myself I would, I joined. It's very modern and really big (it's even got fingerprint recognition instead of membership cards for entry!), but unfortunately, like the rest of Bolivian society, it's very male-oriented. The weights room is huge, but there are only about 10 cardio machines, and it gets very busy. But it does the job, and for about 10 English pounds for a months unlimited membership it's not bad. The only thing is that with working in the mornings and the afternoons, my Spanish classes till 6, AND going to the gym afterwards, I just have no time! But then that's the way I like it I guess!
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Tear gas, strikes, and other such craziness
Made it to Cochabamba. I don't know what the Lonely Planet was on about, the road was fine. It took a very long time though, which was less than pleasant on a bus full of campesinos (peasants) who, with all due respect to their culture and traditions, smelt like they hadn't had a bath in a week.
With the sun blazing through the bus windows and heating up the stale air, I was feeling very hot and stuffy in jeans and a t-shirt. Yet next to me sat an indigenous, sun-browned woman with impossibly long black pigtails joined together at the ends with blue ribbon wearing enough layers to overheat an Eskimo. At least I hope they were layers, otherwise she must have been morbidly obese. She had on at least three pleated skirts and as many woolly cardigans, with thick woolly tights underneath, and little pointy shoes on her surprisingly large feet. I suppose all these layers did serve some purpose; I saw her retrieve a money box, a mobile phone and her lunch of meat and rice from the folds of her skirts. Oh, the contradictions of tradition and modernity. She was also carrying a huge bundle of God knows what (her entire life and family, it looked like) wrapped up in a huge bright pink, green, blue and yellow patterned blanket.
I got my first taste of the chaos of Cochabamba as soon as I arrived, when I had to wait nearly an hour in the bus terminal to be picked up because political demonstrations in the city centre were holding up the traffic.
I got my second on Sunday at the weekend football match between Wilstermann (named after some German aviator, I forget the connection exactly) of Cochabamba, and San José. The football wasn't too bad actually, and ended 1-1. But most exciting to watch was the crowd. The stadium is smaller than those I've been in so far, and had only concrete steps for seats, but the fans were even crazier than those in Ecuador and Argentina. The hardcore fans, again, were in clearly demarcated sections, all wearing team colours, bouncing up and down, chanting constantly, waving their arms (and their t-shirts) and letting off flares (!) of the colour of their team . There were balloons and confetti everywhere, as well as the debris that they were hurling all over the place. It was quite spectacular, but it all passed without too much trouble. Until, that is, when towards the end of the match the people seated in the away team section all suddenly rose from their seats and clambered frantically away from a spreading cloud of white smoke in the middle of the stand. I've never seen a crowd split so fast. At first looked like the smoke came from another flare. It seemed very odd, and I couldn't figure it out, until one of the volunteers I was with mentioned the words 'tear gas'. "Ooh, never seen that before," I thought, with curiosity. A few minutes later, we too were clutching jumpers to our faces with stinging eyes and noses and fleeing the stadium with everybody else. Outside, it was chaos. There were hundreds of people running in every direction, and there were armed police everywhere too. Some were in riot vans driving slowly down the streets with their guns at the ready, sirens blaring, and - scariest of all - firing tear gas into the crowds. Meanwhile, two of our group had been pickpocketed during the frenzy. It was exciting, but in such an unfamiliar and schocking situation I also found myself quite scared.
Cochabamba is a nifty city though. Despite being the third largest in Bolivia there are only about 60,000 inhabitants, so it feels more like a town to me. It seems more modern than La Paz, with plenty of high-rise offices and hotels as well as restaurants, cafés, shops, gyms (one of which I have to get round to joining)... Though there are of course the classic cobbled streets, pretty buildings and impressive plazas of the colonial era, as well as blind street beggars, hundreds of empanada stalls, bustling markets, and plenty of gringo-oriented souvenir stalls selling alpaca items, bright Bolivian textiles, and those crazy-coloured stripey cotton trousers that are everywhere in South America. They look like appallingly tasteless pyjama bottoms; none of the locals wear them and no self-respecting European would be seen dead in them at home, yet every gringo I've encountered seems to own a pair and wear them every other day. I finally succumbed this weekend and bought a more modestly coloured pair (black and brown) for all of about two English pounds, though I haven't brought myself to wear them in public yet.
The location is impressive too. I forget what cocha means, but bamba means valley in Quechua, and accordingly the city is located in a beautiful fertile valley. The views from the higher stands of the football stadium are pretty incredible; not only do you have a great view of the pitch, but all around are green mountains. Atop of one of the hills closer to the city is perched a giant white statue of Jesus - the biggest Jesus in the world apparently, bigger even than the Jesus overlooking Rio. It glows different colours at night, and apparently you can climb up into Him and walk into His arms. There has even been the occasional suicide from His armpit.
I've settled in to my new home, a lovely detached bungalow in the northern suburbs of the city with a garden - perfect for sunbathing. The family seems great, if a little crazy. Cristina is very mothering (smothering, almost) but really friendly, and her husband Germán is full of interesting information about the history and politics of Bolivia. The two daughters, Pamela and Vanessa, are really nice but don't seem to do very much except watch TV, spend hours on the computer, and sleep. There are also two cute little dogs and a beautiful white and ginger cat. Two other volunteers, Marie-Anne and Amelia, were living in the house but left last night. It was useful to have them around to show me a bit of the town and introduce me to the other volunteers, who as I feared are mostly pre-university gappers. They're lovely people and great fun but, although it makes me sound old and pompous, they do annoy me a little with their insecurities and niaivities, associating only with the other volunteers, speaking only English, worried only about going out every night and spending half of these nights dancing with different boys/girls and then whinging about what they're going to do about their girlfriend/boyfriend back home.
Similarly, being a volunteer for Teaching and Projects Abroad (or TAPA) feels a lot like going back to high-school. I've been accompanied to and from the office, had a city tour, been given sheets of rules and regulations and what to do in various situations, and explained the dos and don'ts of being here. If you believe what they tell you, Cochabamba is riddled with gringo-traps. On only my first day I put myself in grave danger by walking into town via the bridge between the northern suburbs and the centre, because under the bridge live gangs of scary evil glue-sniffers that prey on unsuspecting tourists. "You went into town on your own??" asked Marie-Anne and Amelia incredulous of my bravery. "How did you know where to go??" I'm not allowed to eat anything from the streets in my first week to protect my delicate stomach (despite having done so without problems for several months now), I'm not allowed to cycle along the cycle tracks or walk outside of the safe zones in the centre of the city, and if I ever want to take a taxi I have to call one of a few selected companies. Heaven forbid I use one from the street. Taking time off from work is strictly forbidden, and any weekend travel has to be carefully planned to the finest detail and cleared with TAPA. I have to inform my host family of my every move, and tell them when I will return home.
On the other hand, it is nice to have a good bunch of gringos to mix with, and the staff at TAPA, if a little over-protective and patronising, are lovely people. When I protested that I can't leave Bolivia without seeing the salt flats, for which I'd need at least 4 full days and therefore time off work, my supervisor Ximena suggested that, in return for writing a related article and keeping it hush-hush from the others, time off can be arranged. Definitely the best thing about arriving in Cochabamba is being able to unpack properly. No more living out of a top-loader backpack with way too much stuff to fit inside it: I've got two months of permanent residence ahead of me. Unless I get kicked out for talking to a stranger or something. My family have already commented critically that I've been out every night since I got here. (I've been out twice, and got back at 10.30 on one of those occasions.)
With the sun blazing through the bus windows and heating up the stale air, I was feeling very hot and stuffy in jeans and a t-shirt. Yet next to me sat an indigenous, sun-browned woman with impossibly long black pigtails joined together at the ends with blue ribbon wearing enough layers to overheat an Eskimo. At least I hope they were layers, otherwise she must have been morbidly obese. She had on at least three pleated skirts and as many woolly cardigans, with thick woolly tights underneath, and little pointy shoes on her surprisingly large feet. I suppose all these layers did serve some purpose; I saw her retrieve a money box, a mobile phone and her lunch of meat and rice from the folds of her skirts. Oh, the contradictions of tradition and modernity. She was also carrying a huge bundle of God knows what (her entire life and family, it looked like) wrapped up in a huge bright pink, green, blue and yellow patterned blanket.
I got my first taste of the chaos of Cochabamba as soon as I arrived, when I had to wait nearly an hour in the bus terminal to be picked up because political demonstrations in the city centre were holding up the traffic.
I got my second on Sunday at the weekend football match between Wilstermann (named after some German aviator, I forget the connection exactly) of Cochabamba, and San José. The football wasn't too bad actually, and ended 1-1. But most exciting to watch was the crowd. The stadium is smaller than those I've been in so far, and had only concrete steps for seats, but the fans were even crazier than those in Ecuador and Argentina. The hardcore fans, again, were in clearly demarcated sections, all wearing team colours, bouncing up and down, chanting constantly, waving their arms (and their t-shirts) and letting off flares (!) of the colour of their team . There were balloons and confetti everywhere, as well as the debris that they were hurling all over the place. It was quite spectacular, but it all passed without too much trouble. Until, that is, when towards the end of the match the people seated in the away team section all suddenly rose from their seats and clambered frantically away from a spreading cloud of white smoke in the middle of the stand. I've never seen a crowd split so fast. At first looked like the smoke came from another flare. It seemed very odd, and I couldn't figure it out, until one of the volunteers I was with mentioned the words 'tear gas'. "Ooh, never seen that before," I thought, with curiosity. A few minutes later, we too were clutching jumpers to our faces with stinging eyes and noses and fleeing the stadium with everybody else. Outside, it was chaos. There were hundreds of people running in every direction, and there were armed police everywhere too. Some were in riot vans driving slowly down the streets with their guns at the ready, sirens blaring, and - scariest of all - firing tear gas into the crowds. Meanwhile, two of our group had been pickpocketed during the frenzy. It was exciting, but in such an unfamiliar and schocking situation I also found myself quite scared.
Cochabamba is a nifty city though. Despite being the third largest in Bolivia there are only about 60,000 inhabitants, so it feels more like a town to me. It seems more modern than La Paz, with plenty of high-rise offices and hotels as well as restaurants, cafés, shops, gyms (one of which I have to get round to joining)... Though there are of course the classic cobbled streets, pretty buildings and impressive plazas of the colonial era, as well as blind street beggars, hundreds of empanada stalls, bustling markets, and plenty of gringo-oriented souvenir stalls selling alpaca items, bright Bolivian textiles, and those crazy-coloured stripey cotton trousers that are everywhere in South America. They look like appallingly tasteless pyjama bottoms; none of the locals wear them and no self-respecting European would be seen dead in them at home, yet every gringo I've encountered seems to own a pair and wear them every other day. I finally succumbed this weekend and bought a more modestly coloured pair (black and brown) for all of about two English pounds, though I haven't brought myself to wear them in public yet.
The location is impressive too. I forget what cocha means, but bamba means valley in Quechua, and accordingly the city is located in a beautiful fertile valley. The views from the higher stands of the football stadium are pretty incredible; not only do you have a great view of the pitch, but all around are green mountains. Atop of one of the hills closer to the city is perched a giant white statue of Jesus - the biggest Jesus in the world apparently, bigger even than the Jesus overlooking Rio. It glows different colours at night, and apparently you can climb up into Him and walk into His arms. There has even been the occasional suicide from His armpit.
I've settled in to my new home, a lovely detached bungalow in the northern suburbs of the city with a garden - perfect for sunbathing. The family seems great, if a little crazy. Cristina is very mothering (smothering, almost) but really friendly, and her husband Germán is full of interesting information about the history and politics of Bolivia. The two daughters, Pamela and Vanessa, are really nice but don't seem to do very much except watch TV, spend hours on the computer, and sleep. There are also two cute little dogs and a beautiful white and ginger cat. Two other volunteers, Marie-Anne and Amelia, were living in the house but left last night. It was useful to have them around to show me a bit of the town and introduce me to the other volunteers, who as I feared are mostly pre-university gappers. They're lovely people and great fun but, although it makes me sound old and pompous, they do annoy me a little with their insecurities and niaivities, associating only with the other volunteers, speaking only English, worried only about going out every night and spending half of these nights dancing with different boys/girls and then whinging about what they're going to do about their girlfriend/boyfriend back home.
Similarly, being a volunteer for Teaching and Projects Abroad (or TAPA) feels a lot like going back to high-school. I've been accompanied to and from the office, had a city tour, been given sheets of rules and regulations and what to do in various situations, and explained the dos and don'ts of being here. If you believe what they tell you, Cochabamba is riddled with gringo-traps. On only my first day I put myself in grave danger by walking into town via the bridge between the northern suburbs and the centre, because under the bridge live gangs of scary evil glue-sniffers that prey on unsuspecting tourists. "You went into town on your own??" asked Marie-Anne and Amelia incredulous of my bravery. "How did you know where to go??" I'm not allowed to eat anything from the streets in my first week to protect my delicate stomach (despite having done so without problems for several months now), I'm not allowed to cycle along the cycle tracks or walk outside of the safe zones in the centre of the city, and if I ever want to take a taxi I have to call one of a few selected companies. Heaven forbid I use one from the street. Taking time off from work is strictly forbidden, and any weekend travel has to be carefully planned to the finest detail and cleared with TAPA. I have to inform my host family of my every move, and tell them when I will return home.
On the other hand, it is nice to have a good bunch of gringos to mix with, and the staff at TAPA, if a little over-protective and patronising, are lovely people. When I protested that I can't leave Bolivia without seeing the salt flats, for which I'd need at least 4 full days and therefore time off work, my supervisor Ximena suggested that, in return for writing a related article and keeping it hush-hush from the others, time off can be arranged. Definitely the best thing about arriving in Cochabamba is being able to unpack properly. No more living out of a top-loader backpack with way too much stuff to fit inside it: I've got two months of permanent residence ahead of me. Unless I get kicked out for talking to a stranger or something. My family have already commented critically that I've been out every night since I got here. (I've been out twice, and got back at 10.30 on one of those occasions.)
Thursday, May 10, 2007
From one world to another
Of all the cities in South America, I don't think any can be more chic than Buenos Aires. I took a city tour by bike (how very French) with a lovely Argentine girl who showed me the classic sights. We cycled along the banks of the sparkly new port lined with restaurants, expensive clubs and hotels (including the Hilton); through plazas and parks adorned with fountains, memorials (not least the memorial to those that died in the Falklands War) and statues that were gifts from various countries; by huge mansions, cathedrals and impressive government buildings (one painted in pastel pink); through the modern business district full of glass-walled skyscrapers designed by world-reknowned architects; and to the famous La Boca barrio, the amazingly colourful old centre of Buenos Aires and the birthplace of Tango, brimming with trendy cafés, bars and restaurantes as well as the inevitable souvenir shops and tango dancers posing for photographs. Even more so than the rest of Buenos Aires, it's full of descendents of French, Italian and other fashionable European nationalities wearing the latest fashions, sipping coffee or maté with friends. Maté is a strongly flavoured hot drink brewed from a mixture of herbs drank in Argentina and sometimes Chile in the same way we drink coffee. They drink it from little metal-lined spherical mugs through a special straw designed to filter out the bits. They love it, but to me it tasted like drinking cigarettes. I guess it's an aquired taste.
Besides fashion, tango and maté, Argentinians also love their football. Boca Juniors is Buenos Aires (and Argentina's) most famous team, but they were playing away during my stay, so I had to settle for watching a game of their arch-rivals River Plate instead. They were playing another but lesser Buenos Aires team, Independiente. I went with a bunch of other gringos on the trip organised by the hostel, which we paid 100 pesos for. When we were given the tickets it turned out they only cost 30 pesos each - we paid 70 for transport! And we were sat in a pretty dead section of the stands. We did have a good view of the home supporters at the other end though, bouncing up and down and singing for the entire game, and could hear the antics of the away fans above us, especially when they decided to throw debris (of God knows what) into the stands below. The football itself was a bit pants. It was a very scrappy game, with 2 players sent off, that only ended in a 1-1 draw despite River Plate being strong favourites to win. The crowd weren't too happy with the performances either, it seemed, booing and whistling after the final whistle.
I had a flight to Santiago de Chile at 7.25am on Tuesday, so I had to leave at 4.30am. There was a party in the hostel on Monday night, which I wasn't necessarily intending to get involved in, but I met one of the guys from the pub in Ushuaia there, and later got chatting to various other of the hostel-goers, so it was 3am when I finally got to bed for a power nap.
Santiago is another huge South American capital, with some 6 million people living in a valley mid-way between the coast and the Andes. Like Buenos Aires, but slightly less obviously, it also aspires to emulate the cities of Europe rather than those of the rest of the continent. I spent my day there wandering the Bellavista district, where my friendly hostel was located, amongst international restaurants, cafés and theatres, and the Parque Metropolitano, on a hill in the middle of the city sprawl. It's an interesting park, most easily accessed by a funicular, or train, up the steep hill. At the top is a church and a monument of the Virgin Mary (yup, another one) overlooking Santiago. The views from the top would be spectacular, were it not for the thick brown cloud of smog hanging over the city. The park itself is not too accessible. I wandered along a trail into the forest, but was told it wasn't safe to do so alone, so turned back to the roads and footpaths. Instead, I took the cable car down into the rest of the park to see open air swimming pools, pretty botanical gardens, and several cafes.
La Paz, on the other hand, is pretty much the polar opposite of Buenos Aires. It's hard to believe I'm in the same continent. The highest capital city in the world, sprawled across a valley at a dizzying height of 3,650m, embodies the classic South America of poncho-wearing peasants, poverty and political problems. The drive in from the airport (where security was about as lax as I've ever encountered) was a little scary in a beat-up taxi, and I was immediately reminded of the cities of Peru and Ecuador by the shabby buildings and street-dwelling peasants selling their miscellaneous wares. Exploring the city confirms it as being of the third-world, to use a horrible cliché. Many of the streets are narrow, cobbled and congested with minibus taxis spewing out black smoke. Markets fill the plazas, with stalls selling everything from household gadgets like screwdrivers and lightbulbs, wired up just to prove that they work, through herbs, potions and charms (not least dried-out llama foetuses and snake skins), to the thousands of alpaca sweaters, scarves, hats and gloves we gringos love. In the plazas, men and women try to earn a few centavos shining shoes, hiding their shame behind black balaclavas and ski masks. Tourism is obviously the most profitable trade, evidenced by the countless internet cafés, call centres (which all advertise calls to Israel at $0.70 por minuto), tour agencies, hostels and souvenir shops. I spent most of yesterday exploring the streets and watching the peasants go by. In the central San Francisco Plaza, just outside the beautiful old church of the same name, frequent gunfire alerted me to the demonstrations that were taking place (as I think they probably always are). Banners hung from the monuments protesting for something or other, a few leaders with megaphones announced their demands, and hundreds of peasants gathered blocking the streets. The armed, uniformed police or military (hard to tell) seemed to be doing little.
It's a fascinating city, made even more appealing because everything is so inexpensive. I had a great three course meal in a nice gringo restaurant for under $3. I've got a ticket for a 7 hour bus journey for $5. Entry to great little museums (including one documenting everything associated with the controversial coca leaf, which, if more than slightly biased against the West and at times simply wrong in its facts, was fascinating) cost next to nothing. A coca tea in a nice café (I've had a bit of a headache from the altitude) was about 25p. The hostel I found in the Lonely Planet is certainly cheap (less than $3 per night) but, with the exception of the friendly guy on reception, not so cheerful. My private room is bright and airy but the ensuite bathroom is locked, the matress is stiff and misshapen, I needed earplugs to sleep, and the shower was so cold this morning that putting my head under the water caused me real pain. But it was a bed, and after another early morning flight yesterday I was grateful for whatever I could get. I considered changing to a more touristy hostel with hot water today, but couldn't be bothered.
I leave for Cochabamba tomorrow morning, via bus. Apparently the road can be a bit hairy, which scares me a little, but I save about $40, and with so many buses and so many travellers using the route, it can't be so bad. If I don't blog again, you'll know it was a bad move.
Besides fashion, tango and maté, Argentinians also love their football. Boca Juniors is Buenos Aires (and Argentina's) most famous team, but they were playing away during my stay, so I had to settle for watching a game of their arch-rivals River Plate instead. They were playing another but lesser Buenos Aires team, Independiente. I went with a bunch of other gringos on the trip organised by the hostel, which we paid 100 pesos for. When we were given the tickets it turned out they only cost 30 pesos each - we paid 70 for transport! And we were sat in a pretty dead section of the stands. We did have a good view of the home supporters at the other end though, bouncing up and down and singing for the entire game, and could hear the antics of the away fans above us, especially when they decided to throw debris (of God knows what) into the stands below. The football itself was a bit pants. It was a very scrappy game, with 2 players sent off, that only ended in a 1-1 draw despite River Plate being strong favourites to win. The crowd weren't too happy with the performances either, it seemed, booing and whistling after the final whistle.
I had a flight to Santiago de Chile at 7.25am on Tuesday, so I had to leave at 4.30am. There was a party in the hostel on Monday night, which I wasn't necessarily intending to get involved in, but I met one of the guys from the pub in Ushuaia there, and later got chatting to various other of the hostel-goers, so it was 3am when I finally got to bed for a power nap.
Santiago is another huge South American capital, with some 6 million people living in a valley mid-way between the coast and the Andes. Like Buenos Aires, but slightly less obviously, it also aspires to emulate the cities of Europe rather than those of the rest of the continent. I spent my day there wandering the Bellavista district, where my friendly hostel was located, amongst international restaurants, cafés and theatres, and the Parque Metropolitano, on a hill in the middle of the city sprawl. It's an interesting park, most easily accessed by a funicular, or train, up the steep hill. At the top is a church and a monument of the Virgin Mary (yup, another one) overlooking Santiago. The views from the top would be spectacular, were it not for the thick brown cloud of smog hanging over the city. The park itself is not too accessible. I wandered along a trail into the forest, but was told it wasn't safe to do so alone, so turned back to the roads and footpaths. Instead, I took the cable car down into the rest of the park to see open air swimming pools, pretty botanical gardens, and several cafes.
La Paz, on the other hand, is pretty much the polar opposite of Buenos Aires. It's hard to believe I'm in the same continent. The highest capital city in the world, sprawled across a valley at a dizzying height of 3,650m, embodies the classic South America of poncho-wearing peasants, poverty and political problems. The drive in from the airport (where security was about as lax as I've ever encountered) was a little scary in a beat-up taxi, and I was immediately reminded of the cities of Peru and Ecuador by the shabby buildings and street-dwelling peasants selling their miscellaneous wares. Exploring the city confirms it as being of the third-world, to use a horrible cliché. Many of the streets are narrow, cobbled and congested with minibus taxis spewing out black smoke. Markets fill the plazas, with stalls selling everything from household gadgets like screwdrivers and lightbulbs, wired up just to prove that they work, through herbs, potions and charms (not least dried-out llama foetuses and snake skins), to the thousands of alpaca sweaters, scarves, hats and gloves we gringos love. In the plazas, men and women try to earn a few centavos shining shoes, hiding their shame behind black balaclavas and ski masks. Tourism is obviously the most profitable trade, evidenced by the countless internet cafés, call centres (which all advertise calls to Israel at $0.70 por minuto), tour agencies, hostels and souvenir shops. I spent most of yesterday exploring the streets and watching the peasants go by. In the central San Francisco Plaza, just outside the beautiful old church of the same name, frequent gunfire alerted me to the demonstrations that were taking place (as I think they probably always are). Banners hung from the monuments protesting for something or other, a few leaders with megaphones announced their demands, and hundreds of peasants gathered blocking the streets. The armed, uniformed police or military (hard to tell) seemed to be doing little.
It's a fascinating city, made even more appealing because everything is so inexpensive. I had a great three course meal in a nice gringo restaurant for under $3. I've got a ticket for a 7 hour bus journey for $5. Entry to great little museums (including one documenting everything associated with the controversial coca leaf, which, if more than slightly biased against the West and at times simply wrong in its facts, was fascinating) cost next to nothing. A coca tea in a nice café (I've had a bit of a headache from the altitude) was about 25p. The hostel I found in the Lonely Planet is certainly cheap (less than $3 per night) but, with the exception of the friendly guy on reception, not so cheerful. My private room is bright and airy but the ensuite bathroom is locked, the matress is stiff and misshapen, I needed earplugs to sleep, and the shower was so cold this morning that putting my head under the water caused me real pain. But it was a bed, and after another early morning flight yesterday I was grateful for whatever I could get. I considered changing to a more touristy hostel with hot water today, but couldn't be bothered.
I leave for Cochabamba tomorrow morning, via bus. Apparently the road can be a bit hairy, which scares me a little, but I save about $40, and with so many buses and so many travellers using the route, it can't be so bad. If I don't blog again, you'll know it was a bad move.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Patagonia
Got back from Patagonia on Friday. It was a fantastic couple of weeks, spent mostly eating (or so it feels), though there was some hiking too. The group was really good fun, except for one rather wierd guy who went crazy at the end. Again I was the youngest one by some years. There were: Ann, 58, a lovely Austrailian nurse with heaps of energy travelling the world after the death of her husband; Olivia, 33, a fantastic Irish girl who made me laugh almost as much as the previous Irish trio; Kate, 27, a really nice Harvard medical student who'd been working in hospitals in South America; her brother Dan, 30, a cute lawyer who'd enjoyed near-celebrity status as a contestant in the US reality show "For Love or Money" (hehe); Rudy and Cecile, 45 and 37, a Swiss couple who had sold their restaurant in Interlaken to travel round the world; Nina, my roomie, 29, an engineer from Austria; and finally Sean, 33, a health-freak working in computers for Meryl Lynch in New York.
Much of the south Patagonian landscape is desolate, with little vegetation, so scrubby nothingness stretches out for miles, into distant snowy mountains and interrupted by the odd lake or river. It reminded me of Iceland. In both places, long grey winters characterised by lots of snow and little daylight make the people long for colour to brighten up their lives, so they paint their sturdy houses in bold clashing colours. Bright pink and yellow was a popular combination. The towns also have a very alpine feel, no doubt owing to the European roots of most Argentinians, who sought to bring something of the mountain resorts of France, Austria and Italy to their new settlements. They are very modern though, and clearly oriented to empty the pockets of the countless tourists who pass through on the Patagonia trail. The small town centres are filled with shops selling souvenirs and cold weather hiking gear, tourist agencies advertising tours to the glaciers, cosy coffee and yummy chocolate shops, and plenty of bars and restaurants offering giant steaks and local beer.
Our first stop, El Calafate, was a collection of garishly coloured buildings stood together on the banks of a lake in the middle of nowhere. We had a day or two there to explore the gift shops, drink hot chocolate, watch a bizarre rugby tournament and fend off the countless stray dogs who seem to populate the streets of every Argentinian town. Next was the Perito Moreno glacier. It is incredible. At 250 square kilometres in area and 30km in length, it is the most famous of 48 glaciers in the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. We had a boat trip to the terminus of the glacier, which advances into Lago Argentina, but towers 60m above the water at its end. Most remarkable is the colour of the ice: a bright turquoise blue, resulting from compression to such an extent that all of the oxygen is squeezed out. Mr Roberts would be proud that I remembered that from my geography lessons. It was freezing on the boat, but I didn't let numb fingers stop me from taking a silly amount of photos. (Must get round to posting them on the web sometime.)
Our second stop was El Chaltén, a tiny town in a valley next to a popular hiking area at the base of the Fitz Roy, the highest mountain in Patagonia at 3375m. The mountains and valleys weren't quite as impressive as those of the Cordillera Blanca in Peru, but were no less beautiful. Coming right at the end of the hiking season, just as autumn was fading into winter, not only did we have the trails to ourselves but we saw the park at it's prettiest. The snow had begun to fall, but the trees had not yet lost their leaves, so the fiery reds, oranges and yellows of the Patagonian vegetation blazed across the valleys, contrasted perfectly by the sparkling white of the fresh scattered snow, the dark greys of the rocky mountain peaks, and the striking blues of the small lakes. We walked through decidous forests and by babbling streams and picnicked on the pebbled shores of a lake with views of blue-tinged glaciers carving more shapes into the mountains above. We stayed in a cute little hostel run by a friendly Argentinian called Marcelo, but we managed to break their toilets and the woman who did our laundry managed to destroy our synthetics. Or rather, Ann broke their toilets and they destroyed her laundry. It provided lots of giggles anyway. We spent the evenings (just as we spent every spare moment) eating, as well as sampling the yummy local brew. Except Sean, who was tee-total and walked out of a couple of restaurants with no apology because he claimed to have detected a whiff of cigarette smoke.
From El Chaltén we crossed the border by bus into Chile and stopped in sleepy Puerto Natales, half of whose residents seemed to have already left for the winter. Our hotel was very interesting, with every room decorated in pastel pink, from the bedclothes, wallpaper and curtains to the frills on the toilet. From Puerto Natales we spent three days hiking in the Torres del Paine national park, full again of glaciers, mountains, forests, rivers and waterfalls, with a great guide called Mariano. We saw hundreds of giraffe-like guanacos, the Patagonian relative of the llama, and, best of all, several condors soaring majestically above us. After so much talk of them, and seeing only one in Peru, I'd considered them to be some kind of rare mythical creature, but we saw plenty down here. Mariano pointed out a condor nest in a niche in a rocky valleyside, noticeable because of the white smear of condor crap just below it. Waking up in the campsite to views of the mountains illuminated in pink and yellow by the early morning sun was pretty special. And camping was much more comfortable than I'd expected - definitely didn't need the extra sleeping bag I'd packed just in case. Sean complained of the cold sleeping on his own though. I don't think camping is really his thing. Whilst the rest of us were happy enough to rough it for a few days, he insisted on taking 2 showers per day. The night we returned to Puerto Natales the owners of the frilly pink hotel cooked us a lovely meal and we celebrated our tour leader Ursula's 30th birthday with cake and candles. We had the place entirely to ourselves, and the family got out their guitar and sung typical songs and danced for us all. (Except Sean, who went to bed straight after dinner.)
Punta Arenas, on the shores of the Estrecho de Magallanes, or the Magellan Straits. We were supposed to have an excursion to see penguins from Punta Arenas, but unfortunately all the penguins had migrated already, to go and lay eggs and start marching in Antartica or something. Very disappointing. I was soo excited about seeing penguins. So instead we wandered down to the "beach", fended off more stray dogs, wandered round some more gift shops, and ate lots. Whilst it's true that steaks are the main feature of the cuisine down here (and everyone in the group agreed that they were the best steaks they'd tasted), it really isn't too difficult to get veggie options. I had some yummy pizza, pasta and salads. In the evening, Rudy and Cecile supervised a group cooking session, which was very successful. Sean refused to eat what we'd prepared because the pasta was white and not wholemeal, despite the fact that he ate loads of white bread for his lunches.
We had a long bus ride down to Ushuaia, the southern-most city in the world, on the shores of the Beagle Channel on the island of Tierra del Fuego. It was made just about bearable with music, my book and (of course) snacking, and we got some entertainment from a couple of hungover Americans boasting loudly about their sexual conquests. Olivia grossed the entire bus out when she opened a bag of day-old cabbage. Ushuaia is an interesting city, with that familiar mixture of alpine shop fronts and garishly painted buildings. Behind the city are white snowy mountains that most of the time are engulfed in low grey clouds, and in front is the harbour, full of tour boats and cargo ships. We took a trip on a boat to the islands of Tierra del Fuego and saw colonies of sea lions and cormorants. I'm glad I took a sea-sickness pill, it was pretty rough. One of the museums is very interesting. It's called the maritime museum, but as well as displaying the history and artefacts of famous maritime explorers and Antartic expeditions it has exhibits about native life and culture, the history of Ushuaia, the oil industry, penguins, the prison of Ushuaia and its convicts, and pictures of prisons from all over the world, in a very random order. The museum is based in the former prison of Ushuaia, which served as a penal colony for the worst offenders in Argentina. Notoriously, the prison required only a thin fence for security since escapees were forced to return by the isolation and harsh climate of its location. Dan, Kate, Nina and I went hiking in the national park, and discovered a delicious vegetarian take-out place where we got lunch for each of the three days we stayed there. I was very happy! Next door, too, was a chocolate shop called the Edelweiss, with really amazing chocolate. In honour of Olivia we all (except Sean) went to an Irish pub one night, which seemed the place to be. The boastful Americans from the bus were there, as well as the other tourists from our boat trip, and the familiar mix of Americans and Israelis. Dan had to avoid the attentions of a local man with dodgy hair, and when the others left Olivia and I were approached by the remaining men as if they hadn't seen women in weeks.
We were due to take a flight back to Buenos Aires at 2.30pm on Friday, but it was delayed. SEan was due to take a flight back to New York at 9.45pm that night. He got very stressed that he might miss his flight and took it out on Ursula in the common room of the hotel in the presence of the rest of us and the hotel staff. He yelled that it was her responsibility to make sure that he got his flight home, and that GAP had promised him he would be ok. Nina and I left when it all started getting nasty, but apparently it got worse. He tried to involve the rest of the group, and when they refused to agree that Ursula was in the wrong he turned on them too, including Rudy and Cecile who he'd been following around like a puppy for the entire trip, and who'd been too polite to tell him to leave them alone. He insulted Ann so much that she slapped him, and the hotel were on the verge of calling the police. He refused to talk to any of us after that. He did miss his flight, and had to stay in our hotel in Buenos Aires and catch a flight the next day. Fortunately we didn't encounter him again, but we had a good gossip about how weird he was. He hadn't spoken to his parents in 10 years and had no desire to get in touch with them, which I think is always a bad sign. Dan reckoned he was homophobic, and it seems that he slept in a chair in the common room in El Chaltén to avoid having to sleep in the same dorm as Dan, despite Dan making it clear early on that he was straight. He told Rudy he feels uncomfortable around women, but was always boasting to the rest of us about the women he'd had, and once said that unless he leaves a bar with a woman the night has been a waste of time for him. He was an interesting guy to talk to but I think he's got OCD and probably a lot more problems besides!
Friday night was great fun. We went to a tango show, which made me sure I want to learn salsa when I head to Bolivia, and then for a drink, before Olivia and I went out to a club. Olivia found us some Irish guys to chat with, and somehow we passed the time until about 6.30am. We got back to the hotel just in time for breakfast before bed. I woke up with 2 fire extinguishers on the dressing table and very wet clothes from splashing around in the swimming-pool-type water feature in the club. Did not have the energy to go out last night, so had a very nice night's sleep. I'm in a hostel at the moment, the "party hostel". When I checked in at 2ish, my roomates were sleeping. When I went to bed at about 10.30pm, they were getting up and ready to go out. When I was waking up at 9ish, they came back and went to bed. I reckon you'd be jetlagged after a few nights of Buenos Aires nightlife. I'm off to a football game this afternoon, yay!
Much of the south Patagonian landscape is desolate, with little vegetation, so scrubby nothingness stretches out for miles, into distant snowy mountains and interrupted by the odd lake or river. It reminded me of Iceland. In both places, long grey winters characterised by lots of snow and little daylight make the people long for colour to brighten up their lives, so they paint their sturdy houses in bold clashing colours. Bright pink and yellow was a popular combination. The towns also have a very alpine feel, no doubt owing to the European roots of most Argentinians, who sought to bring something of the mountain resorts of France, Austria and Italy to their new settlements. They are very modern though, and clearly oriented to empty the pockets of the countless tourists who pass through on the Patagonia trail. The small town centres are filled with shops selling souvenirs and cold weather hiking gear, tourist agencies advertising tours to the glaciers, cosy coffee and yummy chocolate shops, and plenty of bars and restaurants offering giant steaks and local beer.
Our first stop, El Calafate, was a collection of garishly coloured buildings stood together on the banks of a lake in the middle of nowhere. We had a day or two there to explore the gift shops, drink hot chocolate, watch a bizarre rugby tournament and fend off the countless stray dogs who seem to populate the streets of every Argentinian town. Next was the Perito Moreno glacier. It is incredible. At 250 square kilometres in area and 30km in length, it is the most famous of 48 glaciers in the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. We had a boat trip to the terminus of the glacier, which advances into Lago Argentina, but towers 60m above the water at its end. Most remarkable is the colour of the ice: a bright turquoise blue, resulting from compression to such an extent that all of the oxygen is squeezed out. Mr Roberts would be proud that I remembered that from my geography lessons. It was freezing on the boat, but I didn't let numb fingers stop me from taking a silly amount of photos. (Must get round to posting them on the web sometime.)
Our second stop was El Chaltén, a tiny town in a valley next to a popular hiking area at the base of the Fitz Roy, the highest mountain in Patagonia at 3375m. The mountains and valleys weren't quite as impressive as those of the Cordillera Blanca in Peru, but were no less beautiful. Coming right at the end of the hiking season, just as autumn was fading into winter, not only did we have the trails to ourselves but we saw the park at it's prettiest. The snow had begun to fall, but the trees had not yet lost their leaves, so the fiery reds, oranges and yellows of the Patagonian vegetation blazed across the valleys, contrasted perfectly by the sparkling white of the fresh scattered snow, the dark greys of the rocky mountain peaks, and the striking blues of the small lakes. We walked through decidous forests and by babbling streams and picnicked on the pebbled shores of a lake with views of blue-tinged glaciers carving more shapes into the mountains above. We stayed in a cute little hostel run by a friendly Argentinian called Marcelo, but we managed to break their toilets and the woman who did our laundry managed to destroy our synthetics. Or rather, Ann broke their toilets and they destroyed her laundry. It provided lots of giggles anyway. We spent the evenings (just as we spent every spare moment) eating, as well as sampling the yummy local brew. Except Sean, who was tee-total and walked out of a couple of restaurants with no apology because he claimed to have detected a whiff of cigarette smoke.
From El Chaltén we crossed the border by bus into Chile and stopped in sleepy Puerto Natales, half of whose residents seemed to have already left for the winter. Our hotel was very interesting, with every room decorated in pastel pink, from the bedclothes, wallpaper and curtains to the frills on the toilet. From Puerto Natales we spent three days hiking in the Torres del Paine national park, full again of glaciers, mountains, forests, rivers and waterfalls, with a great guide called Mariano. We saw hundreds of giraffe-like guanacos, the Patagonian relative of the llama, and, best of all, several condors soaring majestically above us. After so much talk of them, and seeing only one in Peru, I'd considered them to be some kind of rare mythical creature, but we saw plenty down here. Mariano pointed out a condor nest in a niche in a rocky valleyside, noticeable because of the white smear of condor crap just below it. Waking up in the campsite to views of the mountains illuminated in pink and yellow by the early morning sun was pretty special. And camping was much more comfortable than I'd expected - definitely didn't need the extra sleeping bag I'd packed just in case. Sean complained of the cold sleeping on his own though. I don't think camping is really his thing. Whilst the rest of us were happy enough to rough it for a few days, he insisted on taking 2 showers per day. The night we returned to Puerto Natales the owners of the frilly pink hotel cooked us a lovely meal and we celebrated our tour leader Ursula's 30th birthday with cake and candles. We had the place entirely to ourselves, and the family got out their guitar and sung typical songs and danced for us all. (Except Sean, who went to bed straight after dinner.)
Punta Arenas, on the shores of the Estrecho de Magallanes, or the Magellan Straits. We were supposed to have an excursion to see penguins from Punta Arenas, but unfortunately all the penguins had migrated already, to go and lay eggs and start marching in Antartica or something. Very disappointing. I was soo excited about seeing penguins. So instead we wandered down to the "beach", fended off more stray dogs, wandered round some more gift shops, and ate lots. Whilst it's true that steaks are the main feature of the cuisine down here (and everyone in the group agreed that they were the best steaks they'd tasted), it really isn't too difficult to get veggie options. I had some yummy pizza, pasta and salads. In the evening, Rudy and Cecile supervised a group cooking session, which was very successful. Sean refused to eat what we'd prepared because the pasta was white and not wholemeal, despite the fact that he ate loads of white bread for his lunches.
We had a long bus ride down to Ushuaia, the southern-most city in the world, on the shores of the Beagle Channel on the island of Tierra del Fuego. It was made just about bearable with music, my book and (of course) snacking, and we got some entertainment from a couple of hungover Americans boasting loudly about their sexual conquests. Olivia grossed the entire bus out when she opened a bag of day-old cabbage. Ushuaia is an interesting city, with that familiar mixture of alpine shop fronts and garishly painted buildings. Behind the city are white snowy mountains that most of the time are engulfed in low grey clouds, and in front is the harbour, full of tour boats and cargo ships. We took a trip on a boat to the islands of Tierra del Fuego and saw colonies of sea lions and cormorants. I'm glad I took a sea-sickness pill, it was pretty rough. One of the museums is very interesting. It's called the maritime museum, but as well as displaying the history and artefacts of famous maritime explorers and Antartic expeditions it has exhibits about native life and culture, the history of Ushuaia, the oil industry, penguins, the prison of Ushuaia and its convicts, and pictures of prisons from all over the world, in a very random order. The museum is based in the former prison of Ushuaia, which served as a penal colony for the worst offenders in Argentina. Notoriously, the prison required only a thin fence for security since escapees were forced to return by the isolation and harsh climate of its location. Dan, Kate, Nina and I went hiking in the national park, and discovered a delicious vegetarian take-out place where we got lunch for each of the three days we stayed there. I was very happy! Next door, too, was a chocolate shop called the Edelweiss, with really amazing chocolate. In honour of Olivia we all (except Sean) went to an Irish pub one night, which seemed the place to be. The boastful Americans from the bus were there, as well as the other tourists from our boat trip, and the familiar mix of Americans and Israelis. Dan had to avoid the attentions of a local man with dodgy hair, and when the others left Olivia and I were approached by the remaining men as if they hadn't seen women in weeks.
We were due to take a flight back to Buenos Aires at 2.30pm on Friday, but it was delayed. SEan was due to take a flight back to New York at 9.45pm that night. He got very stressed that he might miss his flight and took it out on Ursula in the common room of the hotel in the presence of the rest of us and the hotel staff. He yelled that it was her responsibility to make sure that he got his flight home, and that GAP had promised him he would be ok. Nina and I left when it all started getting nasty, but apparently it got worse. He tried to involve the rest of the group, and when they refused to agree that Ursula was in the wrong he turned on them too, including Rudy and Cecile who he'd been following around like a puppy for the entire trip, and who'd been too polite to tell him to leave them alone. He insulted Ann so much that she slapped him, and the hotel were on the verge of calling the police. He refused to talk to any of us after that. He did miss his flight, and had to stay in our hotel in Buenos Aires and catch a flight the next day. Fortunately we didn't encounter him again, but we had a good gossip about how weird he was. He hadn't spoken to his parents in 10 years and had no desire to get in touch with them, which I think is always a bad sign. Dan reckoned he was homophobic, and it seems that he slept in a chair in the common room in El Chaltén to avoid having to sleep in the same dorm as Dan, despite Dan making it clear early on that he was straight. He told Rudy he feels uncomfortable around women, but was always boasting to the rest of us about the women he'd had, and once said that unless he leaves a bar with a woman the night has been a waste of time for him. He was an interesting guy to talk to but I think he's got OCD and probably a lot more problems besides!
Friday night was great fun. We went to a tango show, which made me sure I want to learn salsa when I head to Bolivia, and then for a drink, before Olivia and I went out to a club. Olivia found us some Irish guys to chat with, and somehow we passed the time until about 6.30am. We got back to the hotel just in time for breakfast before bed. I woke up with 2 fire extinguishers on the dressing table and very wet clothes from splashing around in the swimming-pool-type water feature in the club. Did not have the energy to go out last night, so had a very nice night's sleep. I'm in a hostel at the moment, the "party hostel". When I checked in at 2ish, my roomates were sleeping. When I went to bed at about 10.30pm, they were getting up and ready to go out. When I was waking up at 9ish, they came back and went to bed. I reckon you'd be jetlagged after a few nights of Buenos Aires nightlife. I'm off to a football game this afternoon, yay!
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Chau Peru!
I've not been in the best frame of mind to enjoy Buenos Aires. In fact I've had a bit of a nightmare. Maybe it's because I lost my lucky coca seed when I put my hiking trousers in the wash...
Just before I (eventually) left the airport after my flight from Lima, I decided I'd better get some money out. That's when I discovered I'd lost my Barclays debit card. I think it's those stupid ATMs in Peru that only give you back your card after you've recieved your money - I must have forgotten to collect my card. I got to my hotel at about 5.30 (my flight landed at 1.30!!) knackered and worried. Hotel Splendid, the departure point for my GAP tour through southern Patagonia, is not too splendid, but the price list said $120 for a single! At that point I couldn't face looking for a cheaper alternative and having to move out the next day, so I just accepted it. I dumped my stuff and headed off out again to find a phone place and an ATM to get some money out with my emergency credit card. I needed dollars for the local payment for my GAP tour, and some Argentinian pesos to keep me going. I tried 2 big banks and my credit card did not work. I went to a locutorio to use the net and the phone; my card was rejected by PayPal and I couldn't get through to Barclays to cancel the card, the bank of my credit card, or my parents to give me a hand. The particularly unhelpful man in the locutorio refused to accept that it was a problem with his phones and insisted that the lines in England were not working. Aaaah! I owed GAP $300 tomorrow, the hotel $120 for the night, and money to keep me solvent, but I had only about $100 to my name. I was all alone in a huge new city and couldn't get in touch with anyone at home. Plus I'd had an average of about 4 hours sleep a night for over a week now. I was pretty stressed out.
I'm just about sorted nearly 24 hours later. It turns out that the stupid man was wrong, it WAS his phones that were shitty, because another locutorio worked fine and I got through to England. It took 2 attempts to activate my credit card, and I've still not been able to get dollars, but at least I can get money. And I've been able to use my card to pay for my next hostel over the internet. Plus I've now realised that the $ sign here actually means pesos, which are worth a third of a US dollar. So my room actually costs $40. Not cheap (especially considering the naff breakfast of fatty croisants, stale coffee and disgustingly sugary "orange juice") but a lot better than I'd thought.
So, Buenos Aires. It's called the Paris of South America, and it certainly feels more like Europe than a part of the South America I'm used to. Leaving the airport on the bus felt much like leaving Manchester airport, but for the Spanish roadsigns and driving on the right. The motorways are big and modern with loads of interchanges and junctions (and functioning traffic lights that drivers actually obey), and there were green fields and big green trees, and coming into the city there are what appear to be 1960s and 1970s high rise flats and offices. The centre is full of banks, posh clothes and shoe shops, western-style restaurants and bars, and lots of pedestrianised plazas with statue centrepieces. There are even functioning pelican crossings! But what's most significant in producing the European feel? The rain. Oh yes. It's pissing it down and very grey. Just like London. So my first purchase with my newly acquired pesos was a much-needed umbrella.
The European feel is quite nice though. Argentina, since it's recent economic crash whenever it was, is still really cheap, so you can get European food, clothes and shoes at South American prices. And there are lots of really interesting little shops and cafés I'm looking forward to exploring. Also, I am small again. After feeling like a pasty blonde giant (and a bit more powerful for it) amongst the tiny native Americans, I am once more a normal looking girl in a city of (generally) European looking people.
I am sad to leave Peru. I could have spent my remaining four months just exploring more of it. Plus I only had a few hours with Hels, who was in Cuzco on my last day to start her Inca trail with GAP. We got to catch up over a wander round the town and some lunch. Very nice, but way too brief! And I definitely could have spent another week at least in and around Cuzco. It's full of gringos (I ran into a bunch of students from my Quito language school there, and one of the i-to-i girls from Lima) but it's such a cool place. Three days and nights were nowhere near enough; I could spend those just wandering round the markets buying souvenir stuff. At least I now have a lovely cosy Alpaca jumper to keep me warm down in Patagonia. And a pair of gloves, and a hat, and a new bag to hold my Lonely Planet... Bargaining in Africa was good training, I got some good deals. The city itself is quite small, but full of character thanks to its narrow cobbled streets, red-tiled roofs and impressive central plazas in which stand the historic and beautiful cathedrals and churches. There are some great cafes and restaurants - not least a place called "Fallen Angel". It's tables are bath-tubs filled with water and real fishes topped with a pane of glass, it's full of funky modern art (including a few paintings that would seem to confirm it's reputation as gay-friendly), and there are no Ladies and Gents loos but rather two cubicles decorated as "heaven" and "hell" respectively, you can choose which one to use depending on "how you feel". The nightlife is pretty good too, with clubs playing everything from 1980s ballads to salsa, reggaeton (yay) and western dance music. There are a lot of drugs about though... and, amongst pretty much every nationality imaginable, a LOT of Israeli blokes using their free post-military-service air tickets.
And then there was the Inca trail. How to summarise that week?! It was certainly very touristy. Being in a large group (16) of gringos makes touristiness unavoidable, but there were also about 100 other groups of gringos doing the same thing a few paces ahead and behind us. But it was definitely definitely worth it. First of all we had our Sacred Valley tour. That was pretty neat. There are so many fascinating Inca sites in the area that you could spend a week just discovering more of those. After trying out our first Inca steps in the ruins, we visited the "Inca Bar", where we tried our hands at a very bizarre bar game called frogs (in which you attempt to throw large metal coins into the mouth of a frog), saw a room full of guinea pigs being fattened up, and sampled some Andean chicha (beer fermented from maize). It's definitely an acquired taste. Although the pink version, "sweetened" with strawberries, was a little less sour.
The first few hours of the Inca trail only confirmed my fears that it would be way too touristy and far less beautiful than Huaraz. We left our bus in a field that served as a bus park for the countless other tourists doing the same thing, and walked down to the checkpoint, where we were given our mass-printed tickets and glossy leaflets about the trek, in return for registering ourselves with our passports. We set off, with our crew of 22 porters carrying all our stuff, along a highway of people lined with electricity pylons and cables and peppered with stalls selling soft drinks and snacks what felt like every 200m. I was pretty disappointed.
Fortunately things improved as we walked further. I'm very glad I bought a replacement camera in Cuzco before we left. Even if it is a naff Kodak EasyShare. We left the main electricity route and entered more beautiful and rugged valleys and mountains. Our crazy guide Ali made sure that we were the slowest group by stopping every 10 minutes for a 20 minute break, so we soon lost the majority of the other hikers. Although lacking the towering snowy peaks of the Cordillera Blanca, the Inca trail is undoubtedly beautiful. The views from the high passes were spectacular, and the steep jungle-covered valleys and wide winding rivers in the cloud forest on the climb down to Machu Picchu are just incredible. Best of all, the Inca trail is far more than just the route to Machu Picchu, for there are countless Inca sites along the way that are impressive themselves. Unfortunately, after three days of beautiful weather (and nicely dry paths), the day we arrived to Machu Picchu was very very cloudy. We got to the Sun Gate, from where can be enjoyed the beautiful first views of the ruined city, to see...clouds. We waited for two hours but it never really cleared up. Nevertheless, even without nice blue skies as a backdrop, Machu Picchu is very impressive. It's setting is what makes it so special - nestled between steep mountains and surrounded (covered, until the excavation) by dense jungle, it's amazing it was discovered at all. Four of us decided to climb Huayna Picchu mountain, which overlooks Machu Picchu. It's even steeper than the Inca trail and scarily so on the way down. We got to the top and saw...nothing, again. Although the picture of us sat on a rock against a perfectly white background is kind of amusing.
The trail was pretty tough, more so than I'd expected. I had no problems with the altitude, except feeling a little light headed after getting off the plane in Cuzco at 3,600m. (Though that was probably the result of lack of sleep after getting up at 3.30am following 4 nights in tents and buses.) But the path is very steep, both up and down. The ascent to Dead Woman's Pass (so called not because it claimed the life of some unlucky gringa, but because the shape of the mountains resembles a woman lying on her back, apparently) is comprised of steep, unrelentless rocky steps. Fortunately we had lots of stops to regroup and catch our breath. But the way down was even steeper - especially the section of stairs nicknamed the "Gringo-killer steps". We all bought a bag of coca leaves to help us along - as well as a a black blob of stuff that apparently is the ash of burnt jungle vegetables which. Aly showed us how to roll 3 coca leaves up with a bit of the ash, which when chewed with the coca brings out the chemicals that do the magic. It certainly makes your mouth numb. The porters seemed to like it though, they always had a lump in each cheek. (And a pint of chicha in their hands at every stop.) I got sick of the taste after a while and gave up. I didn't feel any different chewing it. My rucksack still honks of coca, however. I'd better make sure I air it properly before coming back to blighty since it's treated as a drug outside of South America.
My group was really good fun. I was the only solo traveller, the others were with friends, spouses or family, so it was a little lonely at times. But not really. It was a very international group - there were two Norwegian girls, two Swedish blonde girls, three Danish blondes, an Australian blonde who turned 21 on the day we got to Machu Picchu (!!) and her parents, and an English couple on their honeymoon, as well as the three comedy Irish guys. Our guide was very entertaining and made sure the group gelled really well. (Even if he did take it a bit far by trying it on with the girls when we hit the Cuzco clubs on the final night.) We had singing sessions and joke sessions. Turns out our Englishman, Scottishman, and Irishman jokes are rivalled by Norwegian, Swede and Dane jokes. The food was unbelievably good. Everyday we were served sit-down multi-course breakfast, lunch and dinner at a long table duly decked out in an Andean tablecloth and adorned with 18 serviettes folded differently each day. This is as well as daily snacks and tea and biscuits on our return to camp in the afternoon. On the final night our "international waiter" (still trying to figure that one out, he only spoke Spanish and Quechua...maybe it was the serviettes) brought out a beautifully decorated cake dedicated to los Chulyos, which are the Andean woolen hats with earflaps, and which was the name of our group. I do feel that the porters/cooks/general slaves are rather exploited. They do all this amazing cooking, and put up our tents before we return and take them down in the mornings, as well as lug all our stuff up the mountains about twice as fast as we do with a fraction of the weight on our backs. One porter we passed was 72!
So with good memories and new friends (some of them now Facebook friends; it's practically global...) I came down with a bump to Argentina. I'd love to go back to Peru. But there's so much more of this continent to see, I have to move on. Tonight I meet my new group for my Patagonia tour, and we fly down into the southern tip of Chile tomorrow morning. Very much looking forward to it. We should get to see seals, penguins and maybe condors, not to mention the glaciers and snowy mountains of southern Patagonia. I'm missing the mountains already.
Just before I (eventually) left the airport after my flight from Lima, I decided I'd better get some money out. That's when I discovered I'd lost my Barclays debit card. I think it's those stupid ATMs in Peru that only give you back your card after you've recieved your money - I must have forgotten to collect my card. I got to my hotel at about 5.30 (my flight landed at 1.30!!) knackered and worried. Hotel Splendid, the departure point for my GAP tour through southern Patagonia, is not too splendid, but the price list said $120 for a single! At that point I couldn't face looking for a cheaper alternative and having to move out the next day, so I just accepted it. I dumped my stuff and headed off out again to find a phone place and an ATM to get some money out with my emergency credit card. I needed dollars for the local payment for my GAP tour, and some Argentinian pesos to keep me going. I tried 2 big banks and my credit card did not work. I went to a locutorio to use the net and the phone; my card was rejected by PayPal and I couldn't get through to Barclays to cancel the card, the bank of my credit card, or my parents to give me a hand. The particularly unhelpful man in the locutorio refused to accept that it was a problem with his phones and insisted that the lines in England were not working. Aaaah! I owed GAP $300 tomorrow, the hotel $120 for the night, and money to keep me solvent, but I had only about $100 to my name. I was all alone in a huge new city and couldn't get in touch with anyone at home. Plus I'd had an average of about 4 hours sleep a night for over a week now. I was pretty stressed out.
I'm just about sorted nearly 24 hours later. It turns out that the stupid man was wrong, it WAS his phones that were shitty, because another locutorio worked fine and I got through to England. It took 2 attempts to activate my credit card, and I've still not been able to get dollars, but at least I can get money. And I've been able to use my card to pay for my next hostel over the internet. Plus I've now realised that the $ sign here actually means pesos, which are worth a third of a US dollar. So my room actually costs $40. Not cheap (especially considering the naff breakfast of fatty croisants, stale coffee and disgustingly sugary "orange juice") but a lot better than I'd thought.
So, Buenos Aires. It's called the Paris of South America, and it certainly feels more like Europe than a part of the South America I'm used to. Leaving the airport on the bus felt much like leaving Manchester airport, but for the Spanish roadsigns and driving on the right. The motorways are big and modern with loads of interchanges and junctions (and functioning traffic lights that drivers actually obey), and there were green fields and big green trees, and coming into the city there are what appear to be 1960s and 1970s high rise flats and offices. The centre is full of banks, posh clothes and shoe shops, western-style restaurants and bars, and lots of pedestrianised plazas with statue centrepieces. There are even functioning pelican crossings! But what's most significant in producing the European feel? The rain. Oh yes. It's pissing it down and very grey. Just like London. So my first purchase with my newly acquired pesos was a much-needed umbrella.
The European feel is quite nice though. Argentina, since it's recent economic crash whenever it was, is still really cheap, so you can get European food, clothes and shoes at South American prices. And there are lots of really interesting little shops and cafés I'm looking forward to exploring. Also, I am small again. After feeling like a pasty blonde giant (and a bit more powerful for it) amongst the tiny native Americans, I am once more a normal looking girl in a city of (generally) European looking people.
I am sad to leave Peru. I could have spent my remaining four months just exploring more of it. Plus I only had a few hours with Hels, who was in Cuzco on my last day to start her Inca trail with GAP. We got to catch up over a wander round the town and some lunch. Very nice, but way too brief! And I definitely could have spent another week at least in and around Cuzco. It's full of gringos (I ran into a bunch of students from my Quito language school there, and one of the i-to-i girls from Lima) but it's such a cool place. Three days and nights were nowhere near enough; I could spend those just wandering round the markets buying souvenir stuff. At least I now have a lovely cosy Alpaca jumper to keep me warm down in Patagonia. And a pair of gloves, and a hat, and a new bag to hold my Lonely Planet... Bargaining in Africa was good training, I got some good deals. The city itself is quite small, but full of character thanks to its narrow cobbled streets, red-tiled roofs and impressive central plazas in which stand the historic and beautiful cathedrals and churches. There are some great cafes and restaurants - not least a place called "Fallen Angel". It's tables are bath-tubs filled with water and real fishes topped with a pane of glass, it's full of funky modern art (including a few paintings that would seem to confirm it's reputation as gay-friendly), and there are no Ladies and Gents loos but rather two cubicles decorated as "heaven" and "hell" respectively, you can choose which one to use depending on "how you feel". The nightlife is pretty good too, with clubs playing everything from 1980s ballads to salsa, reggaeton (yay) and western dance music. There are a lot of drugs about though... and, amongst pretty much every nationality imaginable, a LOT of Israeli blokes using their free post-military-service air tickets.
And then there was the Inca trail. How to summarise that week?! It was certainly very touristy. Being in a large group (16) of gringos makes touristiness unavoidable, but there were also about 100 other groups of gringos doing the same thing a few paces ahead and behind us. But it was definitely definitely worth it. First of all we had our Sacred Valley tour. That was pretty neat. There are so many fascinating Inca sites in the area that you could spend a week just discovering more of those. After trying out our first Inca steps in the ruins, we visited the "Inca Bar", where we tried our hands at a very bizarre bar game called frogs (in which you attempt to throw large metal coins into the mouth of a frog), saw a room full of guinea pigs being fattened up, and sampled some Andean chicha (beer fermented from maize). It's definitely an acquired taste. Although the pink version, "sweetened" with strawberries, was a little less sour.
The first few hours of the Inca trail only confirmed my fears that it would be way too touristy and far less beautiful than Huaraz. We left our bus in a field that served as a bus park for the countless other tourists doing the same thing, and walked down to the checkpoint, where we were given our mass-printed tickets and glossy leaflets about the trek, in return for registering ourselves with our passports. We set off, with our crew of 22 porters carrying all our stuff, along a highway of people lined with electricity pylons and cables and peppered with stalls selling soft drinks and snacks what felt like every 200m. I was pretty disappointed.
Fortunately things improved as we walked further. I'm very glad I bought a replacement camera in Cuzco before we left. Even if it is a naff Kodak EasyShare. We left the main electricity route and entered more beautiful and rugged valleys and mountains. Our crazy guide Ali made sure that we were the slowest group by stopping every 10 minutes for a 20 minute break, so we soon lost the majority of the other hikers. Although lacking the towering snowy peaks of the Cordillera Blanca, the Inca trail is undoubtedly beautiful. The views from the high passes were spectacular, and the steep jungle-covered valleys and wide winding rivers in the cloud forest on the climb down to Machu Picchu are just incredible. Best of all, the Inca trail is far more than just the route to Machu Picchu, for there are countless Inca sites along the way that are impressive themselves. Unfortunately, after three days of beautiful weather (and nicely dry paths), the day we arrived to Machu Picchu was very very cloudy. We got to the Sun Gate, from where can be enjoyed the beautiful first views of the ruined city, to see...clouds. We waited for two hours but it never really cleared up. Nevertheless, even without nice blue skies as a backdrop, Machu Picchu is very impressive. It's setting is what makes it so special - nestled between steep mountains and surrounded (covered, until the excavation) by dense jungle, it's amazing it was discovered at all. Four of us decided to climb Huayna Picchu mountain, which overlooks Machu Picchu. It's even steeper than the Inca trail and scarily so on the way down. We got to the top and saw...nothing, again. Although the picture of us sat on a rock against a perfectly white background is kind of amusing.
The trail was pretty tough, more so than I'd expected. I had no problems with the altitude, except feeling a little light headed after getting off the plane in Cuzco at 3,600m. (Though that was probably the result of lack of sleep after getting up at 3.30am following 4 nights in tents and buses.) But the path is very steep, both up and down. The ascent to Dead Woman's Pass (so called not because it claimed the life of some unlucky gringa, but because the shape of the mountains resembles a woman lying on her back, apparently) is comprised of steep, unrelentless rocky steps. Fortunately we had lots of stops to regroup and catch our breath. But the way down was even steeper - especially the section of stairs nicknamed the "Gringo-killer steps". We all bought a bag of coca leaves to help us along - as well as a a black blob of stuff that apparently is the ash of burnt jungle vegetables which. Aly showed us how to roll 3 coca leaves up with a bit of the ash, which when chewed with the coca brings out the chemicals that do the magic. It certainly makes your mouth numb. The porters seemed to like it though, they always had a lump in each cheek. (And a pint of chicha in their hands at every stop.) I got sick of the taste after a while and gave up. I didn't feel any different chewing it. My rucksack still honks of coca, however. I'd better make sure I air it properly before coming back to blighty since it's treated as a drug outside of South America.
My group was really good fun. I was the only solo traveller, the others were with friends, spouses or family, so it was a little lonely at times. But not really. It was a very international group - there were two Norwegian girls, two Swedish blonde girls, three Danish blondes, an Australian blonde who turned 21 on the day we got to Machu Picchu (!!) and her parents, and an English couple on their honeymoon, as well as the three comedy Irish guys. Our guide was very entertaining and made sure the group gelled really well. (Even if he did take it a bit far by trying it on with the girls when we hit the Cuzco clubs on the final night.) We had singing sessions and joke sessions. Turns out our Englishman, Scottishman, and Irishman jokes are rivalled by Norwegian, Swede and Dane jokes. The food was unbelievably good. Everyday we were served sit-down multi-course breakfast, lunch and dinner at a long table duly decked out in an Andean tablecloth and adorned with 18 serviettes folded differently each day. This is as well as daily snacks and tea and biscuits on our return to camp in the afternoon. On the final night our "international waiter" (still trying to figure that one out, he only spoke Spanish and Quechua...maybe it was the serviettes) brought out a beautifully decorated cake dedicated to los Chulyos, which are the Andean woolen hats with earflaps, and which was the name of our group. I do feel that the porters/cooks/general slaves are rather exploited. They do all this amazing cooking, and put up our tents before we return and take them down in the mornings, as well as lug all our stuff up the mountains about twice as fast as we do with a fraction of the weight on our backs. One porter we passed was 72!
So with good memories and new friends (some of them now Facebook friends; it's practically global...) I came down with a bump to Argentina. I'd love to go back to Peru. But there's so much more of this continent to see, I have to move on. Tonight I meet my new group for my Patagonia tour, and we fly down into the southern tip of Chile tomorrow morning. Very much looking forward to it. We should get to see seals, penguins and maybe condors, not to mention the glaciers and snowy mountains of southern Patagonia. I'm missing the mountains already.
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