Peru!

I am waiting for the beans to cook. They will be spicy, slightly chewy and hopefully delicious. They are probably going to be our last cooked meal in South America, so I hope they turn out well. We are staying at a very nice hostel called the “Blue House” with one of the best possible views of Cuzco. High up in the neighborhood of San Blas, we found this place, where most people seem to be staying for over a month, at around 11pm the day we arrived from Bolivia about a week ago. Cuzco has treated us well. We have decided to budget big time again and so aren't allowing much splurging anymore—gone are the days of cabanas and fondue. However, after Machupicchu which we did the cheap way (more on that below), we did treat ourselves to pedicures and full body massages (you can't beat $15). Oddly enough we got into a religious art mood and spent the second day here looking at paintings and wondering about archangels. This was of course accented by the immense Inca stones lining the streets, and inflected by our reading allowed of the Golden Compass trilogy, which we recently finished, over coffee and hot chocolate.

So I said we went to Machupicchu the cheap way. That means that we only spent $100 each. But in order to avoid more costs, we woke up at 3:40am to leave Cuzco for Santa Theresa which took us over harrowing roads. Caitlin and I were separated on the van and so we were unable to sleep for fear of waking up in an angry woman's lap—a distinct possibility. So, exhausted, we walked the 2.5 hours to Aguas Calientes at the food of Machupicchu and stumbled half crazed half dazed, into a nice looking hostel at around 2:30pm. Food was so expensive in Aguas Calientes that we had prepared and brought enough food for all of our 6 meals while in Cuzco. We ate the second of what would be many avocado on bread with cheese sandwiches and fell promptly asleep before 7.

Waking up at 3:52 the next morning we trekked to the base of the mountain where the Inca ruins actually are located. There we found the line of 100 people just like us hoping to be the first 400 to the top and so be allowed to climb Huaynapicchu, the mountain so famously depicted in every picture of the site. We were told that the buses would start leaving at 5:30, and walkers could start at 5:00. We were nervous. We thought we might not make it. At 4:50 we were let over the bridge and allowed to start the climb. It was like a cross country race. The staircase up was narrow, slow people could keep you back for long enough that the buses might pass and leave no chance of getting there in time. We ran. Thirty-nine minutes of knee splitting, and thigh dragging latter we made it to the top—no one had passed us. And so it was that we raced up a mountain (600m up) in order to be given the priveledge of climbing another mountain! We did it happily. It was a really fun time in a beautiful place—even if the tourist tax is extravagant we couldn't help notice how much less like an amusement park Machupicchu is than the Iguazu falls. Unbelievable.

Today we leave for Lima—one more 20 hour ride ahead!

Chicken

It is always fun to walk into a place functioning so utterly under its own power that you are looked over as merely a curious and perhaps uninvited stranger. No one really notices you. The taxi people are not constantly calling over to you, the ladies on their piles of goods aren't yelling “papito, caserito, que vas a llevar!?” Caranavi is exactly that place. If however, the foreign visitor is an unnecessary addition to their society, the economy is not wholly divorced from the foreigner's world. Coffee, cacao and coca make up this town and region's most formidable and tasty products. They of course export most of these goods, in one way or another, remember of course that the USA consumes most of the world's cocaine, a sizable portion of it's coffee, and I don't think I need to even mention chocolate, thus we play a large part in making this place work. Other than these cash crops, the fertile Yungas region produces all sorts of tropical fruits and vegetables for the large La Paz market. Yet all this agricultural activity is apparently eclipsed in the town of Caranavi by the hegemony of the fried (broaster as they say here) and roasted (al spiedo) chicken joint. Each shop seems to do so inexplicable well, that none feel the need for variation well. By some unknown fascination for this, the most common of all foods, Caranavi is able to support hundreds if not thousands of chicken restaurants, and yet boasts not a single pizza parlor, or even an egg burger stand (not so uncommon in the rest of Bolivia)! The imagination does not stray far here in the beautiful semi-tropics. The discovery of the revolutionary grilled chicken, it must be stated for the sake of honesty, has resulted in the popping up of a few shops dedicated that particular chicken formula. And if you should want something other than french fries and rice under that piece of chicken, you are in luck in the Yungas, Plantains grow rampantly, and fried pieces of the platano may be an allowable substitute for fries. What more could you ask for? That night we ate fried egg on a pile of rice. Yum.

We arrived with the intention of visiting an acquaintance's farm plot not too far outside of town. He grows high quality coffee for export and consumption in his shop in La Paz. Having placed fifth I believe at the “cup of excellence” for all of Bolivia, I take it his coffee is good (Caitlin corroborates). Sadly we have such a limited time here that when transportation fell through, there was no way to guarantee the visit. We left. Wanting to stop in on Coroico, the destination of the “deadly road in America” and a tourist haven on the way back to La Paz (for the last time). You could not imagine a place more different from Caranavi. In short, no fried chicken. We are currently staying at an idyllic set of cabañas located above town called Sol y Luna. I imagine that this is close to paradise without, but with bugs. We splurged; I hope that slpurge doesn't result in malaria.

Pictures

Hello all,

It has been a very long time since a real post, and I am sorry to disappoint again.  The truth of the matter is that not much has changed.  You will find picture on the right hand bar.  Two new albums are up.  One is a catch up album from the past 2 months since our arrival here in Bolivia.  The second is of our recent trip to see the salt flats of Uyuni and the surrounding lakes.  It was phenomenal.  Beautiful.  Fabulous.  We traveled with a recent friend Sarah, who shared our love of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  We read the first book aloud on the trip.

Email if you want to, I've got some time on my hands!

And Now

Well it all went really well here in La Paz, although much faster than I thought it would.  I'll be heading back to Sucre in a couple days to figure more stuff out with Caitlin.  As of now, I need to get more proactive about Las Yungas coffee and cacoa cooperatives.  Maybe I'll get there sometime by the end of April?

A few days ago

3.29.2011

So I have entered a new phase in my trip.  As the end approaches, I have decided that I cannot wallow in indecision until it arrives.  Thus I will start a project.  The objective is to learn as much as I can about fair trade in Bolivia.  Although this is obviously my interest, I have been enabled by Dave Holman, a Carleton alumnus from 2006 who runs a chain of bookstores here.  He also sources a good deal of apparel and some coffee and chocolate exclusively from Fair Trade suppliers.  The first step then is to visit some of the co-ops he works with and take pictures, make profiles and talk to people.  Obviously this is to Dave's benefit (for marketing), but it has also given structure to my otherwise empty time ahead of me.  So far in the service of my new project I have sat next to a retired Bolivian general on a plane, and visited one chocolate factory (who doesn't love large vats of chocolate!) 

On another front, the comfort and contacts I have made in this country are starting me thinking about ridiculous prospects for the coming years.  One friend who I first met in the south of Chile is considering starting a hostel here in Sucre.  What if I invested in his project?  What if I came back to Sucre every year or so for a few months and worked/helped set up the place and laid down roots of sorts? 

Of family and coca

So if you think La Paz is high up, try 4500m (14,700 feet) and then hike at that altitude or higher for 4 days. . . well you get the point.  My mother and brother succeeded in doing all this with my and Caitilin last week.  We climed over mountain passes over 5000m up and craned our necks to peer at glacial fields on various mountains about three hours outside of La Paz.  It was really a treat to have them with for the last week as we got a chance to push our lungs to the absolute limit, expecting them to somehow breath with about 55% as much oxygen as they are used to at sea level.  Coca was completely necessary.  We chewed all the way up.  Whatever can be said of cocain trafficking in Bolivia, the leaves themselves are not to blame--they are to be praised.

To complete our relaxing vacation together my mom treated us to two days on beautiful Lake Titicaca (3600m).  Well we did try to relax in this perfect cabaña looking out on the lake.  It was made for a writer.  It was made for a novel.  And I am sure we all would have writen one if we had not been all but forced to march accross La Isla del Sol by our diabolical boat tour man (I had to argue with him to let people out to pee one hour before the destination, even though we were stopped anyway at the port.  The boat itself was already 40 minutes late and were only given 4 hours on the island, the walk took the entire time).  Luckily we had our paradise to fall back into in Copacabana. 

One day, many good meals and a few alpaca sweaters later, the family departed.  It was far too short, but who could complain.  Noah even brought me a copy of an LSAT exam to help me pass the time for the rest of the couple months we have left!  We were sad to see them go, but then we saw the enormous pile of new books shiped to the Spitting Llama.  From its stacks we found a copy of Timeline by Michael Crichton and The Golden Compass.  We promised to read both aloud before going home. 

The bus to Cochabamba cost us 25 bolivianos or about 3.5 dollars.  It was the most comfortable I´ve taken here, and I wasn't even cold (of course I am just speaking for myself there. . .) which is saying a whole lot.  But sadly we arrived at 5:30am.  Caitlin was in her haze and somehow we had to find our way to a hostel in the first city since Valparaiso that we have been warned against.  Supposedly there are many muggings here before daylight.  The day only became stranger as the sun rose.  First we waited until 6:30 under our newly purchased bus blanket.  Then after a couple hours sleep at the hostel we struck out into the sunny world.  Finding a cafe place run by a loquatious frenchman (who insisted on only speaking french), we settled into coffee, chocolate, and reading Crichton.  Interupting our reading however came the frenchman's friend, dressed well in his leather shoes and sunglasses.  We were told (in french) that he was in the drug trade here.  Quickly the conversation went from our nationality to my judaisim (which he spotted apparently), to the holocaust.  The drug lord had some good friends who had been survivors... One bottle of wine and 50 pages later we left the cafe.  In search of a veggetarian restaurant (the french owner insisted he didn´t know how to make food without meat, "je suis un bon Français!" he told me) we passed a couple poping each others zits and a woman walking around with a child-sized chair on her head.  Reading out loud was about all we could do to keep sane. 

So today we went to visit Dave Holeman who runs The Spitting Llama bookstore, and I'm hoping he can give me a little direction for this coming month.  Otherwise I go with Caitlin back to Sucre and read a whole lot. 

For those of you who may still be paying attention to my life, it might please you to know that I am alive and well. I apologize for the time it has been since last I posted, but so it goes. I also apologize for the paltry amount of information, emotion and experience I can convey on this blog, especially in trying to cover such an extended amount of time. Now that that's out of the way here is my attempt:

I went to Valle de la Concepcion to be around wine, and get to know a family that made it. In both of those I had moderate to complete success. As in, I successfully surrounded myself with wine, and tried to get to know the family that I was living with. The Quiroga family makes a thoroughly inorganic “vino patero” or artisanal wine. They grow thoroughly inorganic grapes of a few varieties which they sell to Kohlberg which is the larges wine producer in the region. The person who makes sure that the wine and grapes are thoroughly inorganic is Simbar, the perhaps lover of the divorced head of family Doña Chela. I did not get to know him, but did learn to avoid contact with him. He is the kind of person who is so diametrically opposed to change, any alternative idea, and must be involved at every minute level, that being around him made everyone including myself on edge. In contrast, the rest of the family was warm and inviting. Still it is hard to say I got to know anybody in particular.

As my last post indicated I picked a lot of peaches. This continued. After the first week Kendra my friend from Patagonia showed up and helped me pick peaches. We spent many days relaxing, watching movies, chatting idly, and others doing hard labor for half the day and then relaxing and watching movies. It is hard to express how sleepy this town was. Even Tarija, the main city of the region, only 30 minutes away, closed all shops (including eateries) between noon and 3:00. You can imagine what happened in the rural town of Concepcion. But when work needed doing all hands joined in. This was finally evident on the last two days of our stay (Mar. 1^st). This was the wine making day. The store closed, everyone convened in the Bodega and work began. Grapes stained our hands and made all my peach and membrillo* cutting scars look like x-men scars. We stomped on so many grapes. Sadly they insisted we wear boots.

There is of course much much more. Including our almost adventure with an amateur archeologist (El Profe) who digs up bones in the countryside. But that is for another time in a personal email probably.

We made it to Sucre a week ago and met back up with Caitlin who has been working at a not-for-profit trekking company Condor Trekkers. They donate all their profits to local communities and organizations. So yesterday we got back from a three day trek through the gorgeous and bizarre geology of the Altiplano. Being back with Caitlin meant a return to thinking about Camus, the connection between ideas and language, and just a general confusion about the world and its order. All is well.

My mom and brother show up in three days! Wish them luck with the altitude.

Mapa

A new low-tech version to help you locate me and the route taken so far if you wish. (I'm in Tarija)

Peaches and Grapes

We crossed the border at La Quiaca-Villazon—yet another constructed difference in the vast and peculiarly similar people-scape on either side.  Bolivia, “Moneys!”  We proffered the border guard our crispest 135 dollars.  Odd that money marked my fist experience here where otherwise I have spent  a total of 25 dollars in the past 11 days.  No matter.  First impression not ruined.  The popcorn here is much chewier than I'm used to. 

It is tempting of course to write about the difference and similarities between places, but that doesn't really tell you much about Bolivia.  Except of course the one difference important to me which is a severe lack of avocados.  None in fact.  The season apparently is not until June sometime, but I don't buy that.  I think it's just the reagion. 

So as a brief update I will just say that I have harvested tons (quite literally) of peaches, which are in season, then peeled them.  For hours and hours.  If there is one thing to take away from my experience thus far it is that old women can and will peel things faster than me.  They will also be very quiet until they are not, in which case it all starts to come out.  The house is filled with women, seven in fact, and as far as I can tell I am only one of two men who sleep here.  The men who do show up do the typical man things such as machete branches and oversee pesticide spraying (wasn't WWOOF supposed to be organic!?). . .

This is a vineyard, so the wine flows freely, as it has all over town.  Sadly the harvest doesn't happen for a couple weeks, so you'll have to wait for pictures of me stomping on grapes (you'll also have to wait for camera to be found as well. . . not hopeful about that.)  I should probably leave it at that for now as the internet is pretty sparse.  I'm having a good time and reading a whole lot, so I have time to read long emails (cough cough) if you write them! 

Two tired tourists and painted hills

I count myself among what I would imagine is the majority of tourists when I say that I don't like tourism.  I hate it.  It was obviously invented to fatigue a human in every possible way.  It tires the mind, making it hard to concentrate on anything other than bags, bus terminals, crowded sights.  It stretches our capacity for appreciation, making us question the very underpinnings of human empathy.  It tires the body, making it hard to do mundane tasks such as washing your face, or even necessary ones such as get up to turn off the burner on the stove... So the question is, why do we do it?  Well even as Caitlin and I struggle to get to point B from point A we feel the need to go to museums, walk around towns and even go see sights occasionally.  And although the question is perhaps not an interesting one, after all, "how else do we get to see another culture?  Even in our pain we might learn something new." But actually, I disagree.  The reason to be a tourist is to occasionally see the incredible while almost swallowed under a sea of boring.  The Iguazu falls for instance, rising above the thousands of gawking onlookers on concrete paths with crying children.  The multicolored hills of Purmamarca poking through the endless streams of hippie hawking street vendors and deadlocked dawning consumers.  Even in our haze of sensory overload which has rattled us the past few weeks it was the lone bagpiper echoing through the painted hills who woke us up to why we are still seeing the occasional sight, experiencing the occasional bout of tourism.  The abnormal and the wonderful.

But that's enough.  Tomorrow we head out to the border with Bolivia.  Enough with hitchhiking--this time it's not worth the 10 dollars on the bus.  On the 1st Caitlin and I go our separate ways.  On the 1st the hypocrisy  of tourism ends and I become my true self again, an itinerant farm laborer.  Home again.

Oh and check out the new photos if you haven't (in the sidebar)!

Hitchin' a Ride

Many things in my life make me feel like an old man.  People often tell me I was born either in the wrong decade, or have the demeanor and habits of an 80 year old.  Well I take issue, I think 50 year old is more apt.  And no matter what I do, I cannot avoid it.  Setting out, reading Italo Calvino, listening to bluegrass, we decided to hitchhike to Buenos Aires from Puerto Natales.  Where did our encouragement come from?  No not the traveling youth as you might expect, but rather from everyone over the age of 50.  Who else can understand the joy, the wanderlust, and the despair at traveling "a dedo?"And the stories would come "Ah I remember when. . ."  So, in homage to my perpetual middle agedness (even when doing foolhardy or mildly reckless things)  Here is a montage of the past few weeks.

1. Rio Turbio It was cold when we left.  Our first ride took us 4km.  First lesson learned--don't start a day at 8pm, unless you want to camp where you start.

2. 28 de Diciembre to La Esperanza Oh these names are not made up. Our thumbs were poised and ready at 7am, and the car stopped soon after. Well actually it passed us and then 3 minutes later came back to pick us up. We think the conversation went something like this “Hey mom can we stop?,” says Ana “Ask your step-dad,” says mom. “No. . . they have so much stuff.” he replies. Ana, “But really, I want to speak English or maybe even Polish and the car is empty!” (Read: I can't stand it in this car for one more second) “FINE!” Car screeches and turns around. The daughter, 19, spoke to us the whole 2 hours.

3. La Esperanza to a national park outside of Piedras Buenas We picked up this other family of three at the gas station. The father Antonio looked like Che Guevara and had no fewer than 10 images of him in the van. The mother served us more mate in that ride than I had ever even dreamed of. She was clearly a depressed lady, and did not seem happy that we were there. But Antonio was just as certainly leading the revolution and hitchhiking apparently had it's place. They let us out at their next family vacation destination. We were alone again, on the road. The sign read “Buenos Aires 2530km” Caitlin replies “Somos Locos”

4. Jaime and Nano Well there's no way to really understand this ride.  My journal entry: "This is crazy, Loud Led Zeppelin, Hit Guanaco=9pm”  He had a guitar (left), he had a son (below).  We were happy there.  Then he totaled the car, which is sadly what we remember most.  The Guanaco is about the size of a large deer.  Drivers from all around stopped to check in on us, even though it was clear that no one was hurt. It was very nice actually. Turning to us Jaime insisted that we take advantage of the situation and jump in a truck. The police agreed, and hailed a driver down.

5.  Carlos, Guanaco-Comodoro Rivadavia

A Chilean trucker through and through.  Neat, worried, uptight, very nice, disliked Argentines. . . what more?  He took us that night at 9pm and again the next morning at 5am. 

So occasionally the Argentine police just want to check your passports at 12:30am. . . We went about our own business decimating those tufts that make pitching your tent really annoying.  Great sunrise too, but you'll have to check out those photos later.

6-8.  Rivadavia to Trelew Two shortish rides took us to Norberto.  He is our Argentine archetype.  Although he barely said a word in the 400km we were with him, he seemed to us the exact person Carlos despised.  Too tranquilo for his own good perhaps.  We traveled at 70kph.  (Below)

In Trelew we took a little rest.  We saw the archeological museum, and stayed in a hostel.  How strange to not feel the hard asphalt underfoot?  Even stranger was not sticking up our thumb at every passing car for a few hours.  The next day arrived and we set out, this time determined to get far, very far.  We spent two hours trolling the gas station.  We rejected rides, we were picky, it payed off.

9. Trelew to Bahia Blanca (900km) Diego took us at around 2pm from the station and drove late into the night.  He was trucking north with rejected beer bottles, and used cans.  He was a little cold at first but soon warmed up.  Soon enough we were singing along to the music together.  Then the Mate came out.  Then night fell and with it the 1980s rock ballads from his DVD player.  Finally he flips on the black light and we are set for the ride.  He was gunning for home to get his one night a week with his family.  But boy did he love his truck. 

One more night spent on the roadside behind the next gas station. Trolling worked once, so we tried again.  No luck.  It was back to the thumb.  

10. Bahia Blanca to Guamani Finally at around 9am Juan picked us up.  He was incomprehensible.  Somehow through the serious campo accent we understood his love for mate.  We also understood his complaints about the large land owners who grow all the grain the eye can see.  Beyond that it was his smiles and demeanor that kept us amused for hours.  

11-12 Guamani to BUENOS AIRES!!! "So beware of police officers" Juan told us.  As chance had it, that was our next ride for 80km.  But what is even funnier was our final ride.  Remember those land owners who exploit the local economy and its workers?  Well Juan-Carlos was that exact man.  Half the ride this 70 year old was on the phone with Chicago checking the price of grain.  The other half he was chatting with us about the US.  I must say, for being a capitalist, he had very socialist tendencies, supported health care and state pensions, just didn't want the government involved in wheat price fixing.  His air conditioned SUV was a godsend.  

4 Days, ~1700mi. 

Well it's 2011, the latest in what is starting to seem like an arbitrary series of well marked chunks of time we continue to call years.  Maybe it was the park over the last month, or maybe the fact that I have been structuring my own life for the last half year, but time has seemed like a very odd thing lately.  Today I said goodbye to Kendra who I had only met a month ago at the beginning of our volunteer program, but years seem to have gone by since I was last in Puerto Natales, where I currently find myself trying to tune out Snatch while writing my blog post in this heaven of a hostel. Even more confusing is how the coming of this new year has affected the way I see time passing in my life on a grand scale.  Soon I will be 'prime' as Caitlin keeps reminding me.  I will be 23, and indivisible.  How strange.  Still I guess it's useful to mark time's passage regardless of how I relate to it overall.  Don't ask me why though.

On a less confusing note I will try to explain what has happened in my life over the past few weeks.  As Caitlin puts it again, we have only created and said goodbye to a "universe."  AMA and Torres Del Paine has been that universe, and a strange one indeed.  It was created through the normal and of course strange interaction of three, then four people and their various eccentricities.  Although this might not seem out of the ordinary, our particular universe, at least at its height involved things such as the eating of a lot of raw garlic. We climbed incredible mountainscapes while searching for that elusive door to reality, and when we found it within our tent christened "La Ultima Esperanza" (also the colonial name for Puerto Natales) toasted with garlic of course.  We woke up at 3:58 to watch the sunrise shine on glacier Grey, where we discovered that garlic eaten raw needs a chaser, whiskey works.  Finally, on the last day of the trek we started on New Year's day our 2 cloves of garlic a day caught up with us.  Or rather, we were found out in the van ride back by an Australian with a mediocre sense of smell. . .   But this makes us seem like garlic addicts and nothing more!  We also ate at least 1.5 bars of chocolate a day, taught Kendra to love Nutella, all the while bonding over terrible foot fungus.  In short, I have lived in an alternate universe of absolute diversion and fun.  

On the 5th of January we left the park for good.  The goodbyes were actually sad, which I guess is the mark of a good experience.  The Erratic Rock hostel, owned by wonderfully odd Oregonians offered to put us up for free, so here we remain 2 days later.  It is now time to recalibrate our world yet again for traveling--entering what Caitlin calls (yet again) our transition through liminality. . .   We will be moving northward on the eastern coast of Argentina, gunning for Buenos Aires by the 19th.  Wish me luck!