Womens Liberation in Boliva

Just found this on the BBC website - it's awesome! We did find some people who had been to see this in La Paz, they described it as one of the most bizarre experiences of their life. Surely the Americans can be proud that whilst the Spanish brought their dancing and their language to South America and the Italian Jesuits their education and philosophy, they and the WWE wrestling network have managed to inspire some good old fashioned violent entertainment!

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7429029.stm

 

Córdoba

We´ve been in Córdoba for the last few days, adjusting to the shock of being in the second largest city in Argentina. It has a bunch of Universities and is very cosmopolitan and is still an adjustment after Peru and Bolivia. The city is bustling and attractive, with lost of amazing structures left from the Jesuits, including a cool crypt that was only uncovered when Telecom were digging under the city a few years back.

The thing that has made the largest impression so far (apart from the ever-amazing wine) is a memorial building to "The Disappeared", right in the center of the city. Now run by an energetic non-profit, the building has been kept in the state that it was used when it was a detention center ("D2") during the years of military dictatorship in Argentina. 30,000 people were "disappeared" (arrested and secretly executed without trial) between 1976-83 and we spoke to a man at the memorial center who had spent 11 years in various prisons for speaking out against the regime. It was so moving to hear of the dark history from his own mouth and see how passionate he was about not letting the country forget its past.

We also finally started getting our body clocks adjusted to Argentinian time and went out after a late dinner to catch a Milonga, a tango venue where anyone can come and take to the floor to tango. Of course, we watched from behind our wine glasses and marveled at the beautiful dancing. We´re looking forward to catching some more tango as we head toward Buenos Aires tomorrow night.

Lost in Translation 3

The picture says it all, really. Apparently they use a different grading system for men´s clipper cuts in South America and as a result, Andy has the shortest hair he´s ever had! (Apart from that time I accidently carved him a bald patch.) The pic doesn´t really do it justice...good thing it´s hat weather here in Cordoba :)

Salta - Argentina

We arrived into Argentina from Bolivia on one of the biggest shiniest buses we've ever been on, ever! The quality of the transport though was only the start of it, as when we pulled into the bus station we were greeted with not only a large clean modern building but also actual cafes and a taxi rank full of official taxis with proper signs, meters n everything! The city center streets here are full of shops fulls of luxury goods and teenagers with their noses pressed against the windows eagerly coveting the latest designer clothes. New modern cars made by Renault, Ford and other major manufactures buzz around the streets as people go around their business in smart business suits and fashionable clothes. In the restaurants and cafes we are now just another customer amongst the Argentinian middle classes who fill them for weekend brunches and cups of amazingly good coffee. The contrast to the dirty city streets of Bolivia with it´s street black markets, rusting cars and gringo (foreigner) filled restaurants is vivid. We have moved from one of the poorest South American countries to one of the most developed and while both have had political and social problems throughout their history it's hard to put a finger on one reason why Argentina has thrived whilst Bolivia still finds it's self in political turmoil and poverty despite it's huge wealth of valuable natural resources.

One thing is certain though, Argentina certainly has thrived and Salta looks and feels just like any large European provincial city. Yesterday the whole country celebrated Argentina's Independence and formation of their first government in 1810. The president herself (the 2nd female president in Argentina's history) visited Salta to lead the celebrations and a thoroughly patriotic time was had by all! Speaking of partying we are currently trying to get used to the Argentinian way of doing things. Over here it seems no one goes out to eat dinner (and no where is open) until at least 10pm and the hip young party people don't venture out to the bars and nightspots until at least midnight. However everybody seems to be at work the next day at 8:30am only to then close up the ENTIRE town from 1pm-4:30pm for an afternoon siesta. Our body clocks are currently trying to adjust so that we're not too tired to go out at night or too awake during the day when everyone else is asleep. Is it just me, or am I really getting old?

Leaving Bolivia

Who knew how time flies. Yesterday morning we arrived on a night bus at our final destination on this trip: Argentina. We are now in the northern city of Salta, our heads somewhat spinning from the enormous difference already apparent between here and Bolivia, where we spent the whole of the past month.

On our last day in Bolivia, we took a gorgeous hike in the cactus-studded canyons around Tupiza after our hardcore week of jeep adventuring and got to reflect on the country we were leaving behind. I feel like we experienced a great cross-section of Bolivia; we navigated the teeming streets of La Paz during a political referendum, camped on the riverbed in the Amazon basin, crawled into the mines of Potosí, witnessed the extreme simplicity of rural life, and watched the sun rise over the world´s largest salt flat.

The country is at once breathtakingly beautiful and heartbreakingly unfortunate. Consistently poor political management after years of greedy colonization means that the country, so rich in natural resources, has not been able to reap the benefits of its situation and as a result the day to day life of the vast majority of its inhabitants consists of little more than getting by.

The people of Bolivia are warm but also very direct, and I have never witnessed such hard workers as the people of this country, always without complaint. There is hardly ever a superfluous ingredient to life in Bolivia - rarely did we come across any level of luxury or frivolity (outside of the major cities). The only paint on the mud-brick houses consists of political opinion, and I left Bolivia extremely humbled at the stark contrast between the quality of life of the Bolivian compared with my own expectations and hopes of what my future will consist of. It´s great when your surroundings cause you to step outside of your own skin, and I think I´ll be thinking on these things for a while to come. Bye for now, Bolivia.

Southern Boliva

Rather than tell you in detail about our last week in Southern Boliva, bouncing around in a jeep visiting the various mineral lakes and salt flats of the region, we thought that we´d just stick up a bunch of photos. Don´t worry, we´ll be boring you with LOTS more when we get back :-) 

Top 5 (part 1)

As a homage to the most excellent "High Fidelity" which we both recently read, we thought we would start our own "Top 5" lists on our blog. To kick things off, here is the

TOP 5 LIES THAT WE ARE TOLD AS TRAVELERS:

1. The shower water is hot.

2. The water we put in your juice/ice is purified.

3. The bus has a toilet.

4. We like Americans, really. (Bolivian border police)

5. The dog can sing. (Sorry Eddie, but that did not count as singing...)

Number 2 has had particularly unpleasant consequences for us, resulting in problems with number 3, as you can imagine. More top 5´s to follow...

Interruption in service

JUST ARRIVED IN SOUTH BOLIVIA STOP INTERNET HERE CRAP STOP CAFES PCS CRASH CRASH CRASH STOP WISH I HAD MY MAC!! STOP WILL BLOG AND EMAIL AGAIN FROM ARGENTINA IN ABOUT A WEEK STOP FAILING THAT STOP CARRIER PIGEONS. STOP 

Notes from Underground

Potosí is a chilly, pretty city in the central highlands of Bolivia and one which has infomed the history and development of pretty much the entire rest of the country since its foundation in 1545 when silver was found in Cerro Rico (Rich Hill), which looms over the city and still provides jobs for the locals.

The history of Cerro Rico is at once mind boggling and tragic. The mountain´s ore funded the growth and development of the entire country, not to mention the Spanish empire who enslaved not only millions of locals but imported millions of African slaves to help extract the silver. Many of the major cities in Bolivia, including the capital Sucre and de facto capital La Paz were either planted or grew largely as a response to the Potosí boom. Now most of the silver has dried up but miners still work, beginning as young as 8 years old, pulling 12-24 hour shifts deep in the mountain and extracting barely enough silver, zinc, copper or bronze to live.

We decided to take a trip down into the mines to see the history and secret life of this city up-close and personal. About half way through our adventure as we were crawling on our bellies, breathing in toxic sulphuric gases we did question the sanity of our idea, but it was nonetheless one of the most memorable and moving experiences of our trip so far.

Our guide was an ex-miner and told us that for the majority of the illiterate, non Spanish-speaking locals in the area mining is the only option for work, despite the certainty of a very premature and painful death from lung cancer and other poisonings. When I asked if our guide too suffered from lung cancer as a result of his time in the mines, he shrugged and replied "of course." As we descended into the mines we passed even teenagers making their living and were able to offer them gifts of drinks, coca leaves and dynamite (which they have to purchase themselves for their work). The miners work in truly unbelievable conditions; toxic air, extreme heat, and they eat no food during their shift - they only chew coca leaves (and lots of them!) which boosts energy and keeps pain and fatigue at bay.

It was a sometimes scary and ultimately sobering experience to see the working mines and to realise that for many, this is their only choice in life. It is estimated that to date, 8 million people have died on Cerro Rico.

The Travelling Heirarchy

One thing you quickly recognise when travelling are the different types travellers accompanying you around the standard South American ports of tourist call. At one end of the scale you have your wannabe hippies - generally drop-outs of life and clothed in the baggy stripy trousers known locally as 'happy pants'. They seem to have 'settled' in a peaceful town making a living out of selling homemade jewelry, keep the local pot dealers in business and for some reason like to own puppies.

Next along you have the 'restless mid life crisis' traveller who, in the absence of a family or any more unrealised ambitions, packs it all in and disappears around the world for a year or so. These travellers are harmless and generally quite interesting though the 'been there done that' arguments you get when you put two of them in close proximity can be tiring.

The category that I think we place ourselves in is the 'we just want to be at one with you' category, eager to interact with the natives and be absorbed in the culture. We have met many wonderful people along the way who have embraced this philosophy including for some reason a lot of med students burnt out by school and taking time out to explore a use for their skills. We are of course the best and look down upon all the other travelling species.

Then there are the tour buses, large groups of middle aged people doing the tours in style and comfort. The buses tend to pick them up at their nice and sanitary 3 star hotel and drop them at the gates of the tourist traps with the minimal amount of interaction with anything in between. Both me and Millay agree that our biggest fear about getting old is not that we'll end up in a wheelchair or incontinent...... but in a tour bus.

Finally you have the bane of our lives which is the 'rich kids on tour' genus. Generally speaking these are gap year students just turned 18 with a mental age half of that on their passport. Usually named Alfred, Rupert or Lottie, South America for them is one big cheap beery night out with even cheaper drugs, you find them bouncing between the ex-pat western bars in the various major cities proclaiming various thinly veiled racist views about the locals and working out how to get more money off Daddy. Sad thing is that these are the people who will probably be running the country in 10 years time - you have been warned!

Busy busy busy

Sorry I haven´t blogged for a while, a few job adverts came through on my email so I´ve been busy like a beaver filling in job applications and explaining to people that the postal system from Bolivia really isn´t going to get the form to them before 2013 and so could I please email it instead. Luckily (I say that with a fixed smile on my face) Millay has been here to help me with my application forms, the only problem being married to a self confessed (and I quote) "linguistic genius" with a fetish for grammar and punctuation is that my slack prose gets a proper beating. My first (2hr!) attempt at ´describe your experience relevant to this position' got rounded rejected as being too long and autobiographical and so I was sent out to do it again. The second draft ended up with more red lines on than a New York subway map but after some careful negotiation final killer versions were approved and sent off to 3 different jobs in the Merseyside area.

 

In all honesty it is a mercy from God that I´ve got her here at all to save me from myself when it comes to those things, I get bored far to easily and while I´ve never seen the importance of a complete understanding of the apostrophe and semi-colon whilst she gets an unhealthy delight in ensuring such things are correct. I think she´s great and deserves all the chocolate I'm about to buy her!

 

Now, back to travelling!

Dance-off, Bolivian style

Sometimes the best experiences come from following random leads. I found an obscure flyer for a cultural dance show while in an internet cafe a few nights ago and ended up meeting one of the dancers a little later; he was passing by and spotted me clutching the flyer and emplored me to come. Never one to resist a personal invite, we hopped in a cab WAY uptown last night to see what Boris and his companions had for us in the promised evening of Malamba and Chaqueño.

Naively, we turned up a little earlier than the stated start time, sweetly forgetting that we were in fact in Boliva which runs entirely on its own schedule. Still, after a few hours of waiting and sipping the strong local brew, the small but nice cultural center we had arrived at burst into life, buzzing entirely with locals. Boris seemed dutifully amazed that we had actually come and we realized that we were in for a gem of an evening, Bolivian style.

We lost ourselves in the evening as group after group of dancers and musicians, clad in beautiful and varied costume, amazed us with their skills. I´m told the Chaqueño dances were a Argentinian-Bolivian fusion and almost all of them were centered around the theme of wooing and attraction. Conceived from the idea of a rooster courting a hen, the dances included the men displaying machismo through stamping and very fancy and expressive footwork while the women were more demure and coy about the advances of their suitors. The audience were pretty vocal about their preferred groups and took to the floor for their own dancing during the breaks.

It was so much fun being so very submerged in this beautiful culture for an evening , with only our white faces glowing back at each other :) The waitress was horrified at the thought of us gringos going out and finding our own cab at 1 am so she got the doorman to find us a ´real´one. Definitely one of my favourite evenings on the trip so far.

Road Readings Rated

We thought it would be fun (er, for us I guess more than anything) to keep record of what we´ve been reading while on the road. Below is the list so far, read by either myself or Andy or often both of us, with a star rating out of 5. In no particular order:

Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini ***1/2 (Beautifully written, tragic)

Midnight Cactus - Bella Pollen **1/2 (Good, but not great)

The Motorcycle Diaries - Ernesto "Che" Guevara *** (Thanks Ben!Was a thrill reading this while traveling SA, as Che did)

What is the What - Dave Eggers ***** (Amazing tragic story and incredible writing - not for the faint hearted)

High Fidelity - Nick Hornby ***1/2 (Superb. Easily my fave Hornby book. Not usually a fan)

Blink - Malcolm Gladwell ***1/2 (Once again a really interesting readable book with great ideas and case studies)

Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules - David Sedaris ***1/2 ( A book of short stories whose authors span the centuries. Some great, some average.)

The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri ** (Good for passing time at airports or on buses.)

Science at the Edge - John Brockman * (First two essays were great, the rest were way over my head!)

Blue Like Jazz - Donald Miller *** 1/2 (By now a classic but still a great read)

The Spy that Came in from the Cold - John le Carré *** (Simply a classic!)

Brooklyn Follies- Paul Auster ** (Good for passing time in airports. Sorry Micah!)

Harry Potter 5 - JK Rowling ****1/2 (Of course, awesome at every reading of it)

Jeremy Clarkson - I Know You Got Soul ** (Disposable but readable)

Lost in Translation 2

Indeed, what would be a chicken´s fantasy?

Jungle Pictures

Piranas, trees, rivers, and sore feet!!

La Paz take 2

Well we made it back to La Paz early this morning on what ended up being a 19-hour, bumpy, slightly perilous bus journey that rose a full 3,500 m from start to finish. Needless to say we were a teensy bit chilly when we arrived...

Having left the humid jungle behind us we are back at our crash pad, the ever-bustling Cactus Hostel, to see some more of La Paz. Though the offical capital is still Sucre, La Paz very much is the de facto capital of Bolivia and definitely behaves as such. Its like New York with much less structure. Few discernable road rules, throngs of markets, museums, etc. Gear shift from the jungle life!

We are staying in the witches market area (above). Its not so much cauldrons as every imaginable herb, tea, talisman and even dried up baby llama fetuses (spot them?) - all to bring you some sort of luck or health. Fortune tellers read coca tea leaves or tarot cards on the streets to passers by. We are also right in the middle of the main artesan area; no doubt I won´t escape without some knitted somethingorother by the end of the weekend!

Today I discovered the heavenly properties of Bolivian salteñas, small empanadas sold in stalls on the street filled with meaty/chickeny/vegetably goodness. I´m hooked, while Andy laments my fate for eating food from the street :)

Sometimes when you're travelling...

You miss out on important news events - but Boris Johnson as Mayor of London. REALLY???????!!!!!!

Does no one in London watch Have I Got News For You´?

Jungle Extravaganza

Here we are in warm and sleepy little Rurrenabaque, a little town in the Amazon basin. We survived our three day jungle trip to get here which included boating along the rivers, hiking parts of the jungle and sleeping on the riverbed each night under millions of stars.

As ever on such trips, it was somewhat of a motley crew but with a few momorable characters and our very enthusiastic guides, Miguel and Ivon. Once I saw the boat I felt incredibly stupid for having asked after a bathroom, seeing as it really was more of a raft! (Each morning I saw the driver surrepticiously bailing water out of the boat...)

Turns out that the company we booked with is the only one of its kind that does this trip so it really felt like a unique experience. On the way we picked up Pedro, a local who lives in a small community along the river. Pedro was our guide for the jungle hikes and showed us the medicinal and poisonous flora and fauna in the jungle. We even had the priviledge of hiking through Madidi National Park, one of the most protected and biodiverse areas of jungle in the Amazon basin.

No jungle extravaganza is complete without getting up close and personal with nature! As well as seeing monkeys, stalking wild boar and of course receiving a plethora of mosquito bites, we had a few other memorable encounters...one one hike we stopped at a swamp to fish for piranas and yours truly caught the first one! Then on our last day as we boated toward Rurrenabaque, we stopped at a beautiful natural swimming hole with waterfall. Of course, I jumped in headfirst along with a few others before realising that there was some badass fish living in there with nasty stingers. OUCH! Three of us received several nasty swollen stings that left us in quite real amounts of pain for about 5 or 6 hours. Yikes. Not to be left out, Andy managed to pick up a couple of hardcore tick-like insects that well and truly attached themselves to him. Nice.

(I would also like to take this moment to share my personal pride and joy moment: needless to say, changing clothes was not something that really happened - at all - for most of us during the trip. So when I did get changed into my swimsuit to dive into the aforementioned pool, what did I find curled up in belly button but a little dead bug! Nice. )

We´re taking a day or two here in Rurre to soak up the sun and sample the numerous hammocks in town. Then back to La Paz for some more altitude and to continue our Bolivian adventures. Jungle pics to follow...

La Paz and beyond...

As our bus wound its way into La Paz from Lake Titicaca Millay worked out that when she did her parachute jump in New Zealand a few years ago it was from a LOWER altitude than the one at which we currently stand. We´re currently 3,800m (that´s 12,500ft) above sea level and trekking around this steep hilly city is a constantly breathless experience.

As it turns out though this time we´re just passing through, we´ve managed to find a jungle trip that is going to take us tomorrow by boat deep into the Amazon Basin. We signed up eager for the adventure that will take 3 days and involve camping in the jungle for 2 nights. It was only after we´d handed over our money that the reality began to sink in and we started to wonder what we had gotten ourselves in for. In this part of the world ´boat´ could mean anything from a pre-war rust bucket to a raft; my Spanish wasn't good enough to enquire about the existence of a motor. The one thing Millay did discover was that it definitely doesn't have a toilet, I don´t think we've ever prayed so hard for ´good health´ if you know what I mean.

Still if we survive the trip down there the town we´ll stay in for a couple of days, Rurrenabaque, should be gorgeous and chilled. The other slight adventure is that is that the only way back to La Paz USED to be (our mothers - notice the USED) via what was officially recognised as the "world´s most dangerous road". Apparently drunk driving, a 3.2m wide mountain road and 600m drops wasn't conducive to a happy driving experience. Luckily, thanks to a huge international development grant, a new road has now been built that is apparently a lot safer and the old road is now restricted solely to hiking and mountain bike tours that are advertised everywhere as ´ride the road of death´. Don´t worry Donna, I've got Millay on a short leash on this one!

Copacabana

We spent a few nights in cute little Copacabana, on the shore of the huge Lake Titicaca, which at 3,820 m is the world´s highest navigable lake. On it are several islands, including some made entirely of reeds on which the Aymara tribe still live. The Aymara and Quechua peoples of Peru and Bolivia accept as their creation story that their sun-god, Viracocha and the first Incan appeared on the Isla del Sol (island of the sun) under direct orders from the sun. The lake is beautiful and serene, and its hard to remember you´re so high up, until you try to walk anywhere that is!

Of course day 2, I got itchy feet and decided to prop Andy up in a bar with the Liverpool v Chelsea match on while I ventured off on a rented bike along the lake. SO tiring! At almost 4,000 metres (what´s that, like 13,000 feet?) my lungs were the size of a peanut!

Still, I managed to bike to the Bolivian version of the floating islands (Islas Flotante) and along the way befriended a local boy, also on bike, who happened to live there. He very kindly gave me a tour in his fishing boat of the small but very well made reed islands and he even caught a trout for his dinner on the way home!

For some reason I thought it would be a GREAT idea to get back to Copacabana and right away climb the steep hill that overlooks the bay and the lake, Cerro Calvario, to watch the sunset. By this point my lungs were the size of a pea and it was all I could do to stumble down and pour myself into a restaurant to sample some of the lake´s famous trout. I have never slept so well. Tomorrow, off to the big smoke of La Paz.

Bolivian Border Blues

There have been many occasions I have lamented the colour of my passport - blue, for American - and on no occasion more so than the day spent leading up to and including crossing from Peru into Bolivia. Lets just run through the differences between my checklist and Andy´s checklist for getting into Bolivia:

Millay:

1. Get up early. Go to Bolivian embassy in Puno, Peru. Get told I need a form which he can´t possibly give me himself, but I have to find online. Get appropriate website addresses.

2. Find that none of the web addresses work. Of course.

3. Nevertheless, go ahead with collecting all the things I need for the crossing, including:

4. Passport

5. Photocopy of passport

6. Yellow fever vaccination card (Karaoke Eddie very kindly took us to a clean clinic in Cusco to get our shots, don´t worry mum!)

7. Photocopy of yellow fever vaccination card

8. Credit card

9. Photocopy of credit card

10. 4x passport photos

11. Letter proving hostel reservations in Bolivia...and last but most certainly not least,

12. $100 US dollars in cold hard ca$h. !!!!

Andy

1. Get the bus to the border.

2. Show passport. Get it stamped.

3. Walk onto Bolivian soil.

Where is fairness in that!!! *sigh*. At least all went well and I´m not in a Bolivian jail cell. We arrived at nightfall to the chilled little town of Copacabana (yes that´s right, the original) where we intend to plant ourselves, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, for a few nights before hitting the big smoke of La Paz.

If Batman was Peruvian - this would be his Batmobile

Goodbye Peru! We´re leaving for the sunny mountains of Boliva. You have left us with many memories :-)

Despite our best efforts ( last week I ate Alpaca - only learning afterwards that this is a type of llama) we are both well. Millay is speaking Spanish like a local, and I am speaking Spanish like a stupid white gringo.

All in all, life is good....