Bolivia

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Mmmm… Food

24 October 2010 in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay | No comments

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Continuation of Cuenca Culture post
(Around midday, Sunday 24th October, sitting on the grass under a tree, Parque Carolina, Quito, Ecuador) I know eating is universal, and that some people (like myself) get much more excited by this very fundamental act than others do. Of course, it is not an unusual thing for food to have cultural significance and special associations, for individuals and groups alike: Grannies crunchies, Christmas cake. Ritually eating a specific meal as part of a season or celebration or tasting new dishes as a form of experiencing something can be recreational, an activity in and of itself, not solely the fulfilment of a biological need. If there was anyone who really understood and delighted in this, I thought it would be me. But in South America, food is life and life is food. Read the rest of this entry »

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I played at Wild Rover for two weeks this year

11 September 2010 in Bolivia | No comments

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(13:50, Saturday 11 Sept, Lying on grass looking at oasis, Huacachina, Peru) There’s no church here. There were even churches in the tiny villages on the far side of Colca Canyon, which you can only reach after climbing 4200m downwards, and then a bit more back up the other side. More than the fact that there are no houses, that there is no church confirms that no-one actually lives in Huacachina. You might call it a town, but a collection of hotels, hostels, tour companies and over-priced restaurants wedged between the shore of a small natural lake and the sand dunes that surround it, a resort is probably more appropriate. It’s the weekend so at least some of the shady spots of sand and the paddleboats circling aimlessly are occupied by families of Peruvians, who together with the backpackers probably make up the nonpermanent population of no more than 200 tourists. Read the rest of this entry »

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Jungle hair

11 September 2010 in Bolivia | No comments

(11 Sept, just returned from sandboarding tour, Huacachina, Peru) After showering, looking in the mirror, I still see shadows of sand lining my outer ear (which seems designed to catch this sort of thing). But at least my hair is conditioned and moves freely like dirt free hair should. Even before I went sandboarding this afternoon it was feeling a bit stiff, coated in volcanic dust from running back down the very slopes we had just slogged up to summit (or almost summit, in my case) Chachani. Still, combined with the 12 hour bus ride from Arequipa, as well as with my massive sandboarding fall this afternoon (the equivalent of suddenly applying the brakes whilst freewheeling backwards down a hill at great speed ie. I flipped twice and it was a good 10 minutes before I regained my sight and the whooshing in my ears ceased); a bit of sand, dust and knots could never compare to my hair when I arrived in La Paz. Read the rest of this entry »

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Amable Bolivianos from Beni

1 August 2010 in Bolivia | 1 comment

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(10:45, 1 August, taking refuge in our room, San Ignatio de Moxos, Bolivia) I’m definitely not hung-over because the drink on offer last night was Leche de Tigre (Tiger’s Milk), warm milk with spices and near pure alcohol, so I probably managed about 4 Tablespoons over the 8 odd hours we spent in the improvised bar, dancing with a local pregnant woman and her husband and sister. Nevertheless my brain has the distinct feeling of being removed from reality, like that which comes with the morning after. It may have something to do with the fact that there is a live brass band surrounded by drunk dancing men just outside our door in the courtyard of our hostel. Tireless! They have no doubt been playing all night, one of the older guys is asleep, his head hanging forward and his trumpet fallen to the floor beside him. It’s coming down in buckets and the drunk hostel owner’s wet clothes are evidence of the harzards of having a tiled floor. But the rain hasn’t dampened the energies of the few wasted guys trying to convince anyone walking past to join in by cajoling damply into your ear and feeling you up. Read the rest of this entry »

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Itsy bitsy teeny weeny

26 July 2010 in Bolivia | No comments

(15:15, 26 July, Immigration Office, Santa Cruz, Bolivia) I wasn’t the cut-off exactly, but it was the woman just 2 ahead of me who was the last to be served before Immigration closed for lunch. When I was in Sucre I went to the office there to check because my 30-day visa expires on the 28th of July. The Santa Cruz office, being in a big city, is much bigger and quite well organized (in fact I have written this entire blog post on the little slip of paper they gave me listing what I would require for an extension and how to go about getting one step-by-step), but there are obviously far more people available for making queues.

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Noisy but nice

23 July 2010 in Bolivia | No comments

(22:35, 23 July, Bed in Room 1 next to the stairs of Hospedaje Paola, Samaipata, Bolivia) I wouldn’t say I was scared, but I still took the precaution of standing on the bed before I lifted my food packet to reveal that it was only the curly plastic that had come loose from the very book I am writing in, and not a mouse which had been my momentary imaginative suspicion. The thing is, there’s a bit of a scratchy rodenty noise in my ceiling which I can hear along with the chatter and cutlery clatter of downstairs, and between the spates of magnified flushings and drippings and gushings from the bathroom directly above me. The plumbing forms 2 diagonal pipe stripes hanging from the ceiling, in the corners of my room towards the barebulb light. I thought of asking for a different room but even upstairs in the shared kitchen every noise seems amplified. Only a little less than in my room, as I waited for the kettle to boil, I could hear the noisy conversation in the restaurant two floors down; the shuffling of chairs, the metal on metal sounds of the preparation of food, footsteps up and down, as though it was all happening right inside my own head. I’ve been reading quite contently with my fancy earphones transmitting silence to mute the commotion, but I took them out for a moment’s break, and I feel like the antisocial cousin locked in my room entertaining myself during a family gathering. The hostel isn’t particularly dirty, the bed’s ok and the staff seem friendly enough. It’s just that there are at least three generations of them and they are all down in the restaurant having a lively dinner while I’m cooped up in my single room, my door only a few stairs away.

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Ear Fear

14 July 2010 in Bolivia | No comments

(12:15, 14 July, Cafe Mirrador looking out over Sucre, Bolivia) From here up the hill, Sucre is terracotta and white and spans out into the day in all directions until it meets some flat farm-topped hills with mountains behind them. I was up here some days ago with a friend and a glass of wine. We had to rush down to confirm that we would be trekking, in the very mountains the sun had been setting behind whilst we had been distracted discussing his past and my various possible futures. We left for the hike a day later instead, which meant we had to do the 2-day, skipping the last leg so Ollie, who is of Dutch parentage, would be back in Sucre for the final. Pushing it back a day also allowed me to recruit another couple to accompany myself, Ollie and Andreas, the guy who had initiated the trip.

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Blue, white and airless

2 July 2010 in Bolivia | No comments

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(17:52, 2 July, Internet café in Uyuni, Bolivia) I considered sticking around in Tupiza for a while to ride a horse where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid met their maker but, having enquired at tour companies about tour groups with spaces for the Salar de Uyuni since we arrived that afternoon, I decided to write my name down with Rob, a guy I meet on the train, with the first very lovely woman we had spoken to. The fact that I could get to the reasonably sized town of Potosi to watch Argentina play on Saturday may have sweetened the deal. So we met, bags packed, for coffee on Tuesday morning and having introduced ourselves to the driver and cook we embarked on something my tired brain can only call indescribable.

(13:30, 3 July, Koala Cafe, Potosi, Bolivia) Honestly, I don’t know how to explain this tour to you all. We drove for 3 and a half days across the southwest of Bolivia, through some of the most incredible and surreal scenery and always up and up and up. We saw green lakes, red lakes, white lakes, multi-coloured mountains, black volcanoes, deep brown sand dunes, beige deserts. It was like the whole landscape had turned up the colour. The sky was a bluer blue, the grass more intensely golden, the weird plant that grows on the occasional rock was so dynamically green it was almost luminescent. It’s as if the normal world, where things exist at normal altitudes, is blurred and stunted by the extra layer of atmosphere it has to bear. On the antiplano, the sun is that bit nearer, the muffling insulation of air is thin, everything is crisper and sharper. Including the cold. The mornings and evenings were painfully cold! The freezing wind blows uninhibited and penetrates to your bones through the tiniest gap between scarf and hood or cuff and glove, and dare you wash your hands! Even at midday, water waits to be released by the sunshine, frozen in patches of shadow that won’t be moved until the seasons change.

And amongst the thermal pools and sulphuric geysers and the expanses of ice, are flamingos and strange rodents and llama and sheep. And people! An implausibly large number of people, growing their crops and tending their animals. There is something confused inside of me when I see a “village” of five families, a cluster of stone buildings, from which, every day, a team of men walk out to work on the tiny goldmine on their doorstep. Or when I see a woman in long socks and a traditional pleated skirt, knees bare, walking along a frozen riverbed in the frigid hours of the early morning. The tour in its entirety is one of those things that makes you wonder what it’s all for. And there’s nowhere better than sitting in the middle of a salt flat, in a dichotomy of extreme blue and extreme white, to feel like the answer must be simply insolvably simple.

Check out the enormous photoalbum on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=191761&id=504021698



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Bolivia at Last

28 June 2010 in Bolivia | 2 comments

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(16:25 Uruguay time, Monday 28 June, Bus between Villazon at Argentine border and Tupiza) Nearly two months into my trip and finally I’m in Bolivia! I’ve spent the whole day travelling but through the most astounding scenery. The train I am on, supposedly the best form of travel from the border, doesn’t run every day so I had to plan ahead for my trip from Salta – another reason to linger in the city which has been my longest stop by far, about 17 days.

Busing in the Quebrada (mountains) north of Salta is relatively easy and the spectacular route through coloured mountains and yellow plains, thorny with cacti, runs from one quaint montane town to the next, each with its share of tourist to-do’s and see’s and more hostels than necessary at this time of year. Despite the recommendations of most Salteños, I decided to stop in San Salvador de Juyjuy, the capital city of the northern Juyjuy province, just to check it out. Unfortunately I had stayed out clubbing until 6.30am from the night before, which had been normal for Salta, except my bus to Jujuy left at 7am.

I knew I was tired (I have a small bruise on my right eyebrow where I kept falling asleep against the window pane while I tried to watch the view from my first bus) and I had my whole pack with me, so after I walked around, went to a few museums and felt like I had had a taste of the city, I stretched out on a park bench in the sun to have a kip. Obviously, I missed my bus to Pumamarca so I bought the next ticket north, direct to Tilcara, which was supposed to be my stop for the following night. There’s a lot to do there and I could always take a local bus back to Pumamarca if I liked.

But halfway between the two, a little town called Maimara had beautiful vegetables growing along what is literally called ” The Painted Mountain” for its colouration. A Hostelling International sign provoked the idea and given a couple of metres to remember it had been some time since my last spontaneous decision, I sprung up to tell the driver I planned to stay. Having checked in as the only guest at the Flor de Maimara, without doubt one of the loveliest hostels I have stayed in, with the most helpful receptionist, I walked through the “rural sector” on my way to the the local vineyard and indeed the vegetables were lush and large. I slept when I sat down at a table overlooking the fields of grape vines, and I slept when I sat down on the lazyman’s mirrador (the real one looked a bit ambitious in my state) so it seemed if I stopped moving at all, I slept. Personally I blame it on the altitude. After about 12 hours without movement, in my hostel bed, I felt much more acclimatized!

I shared a taxi to Pumamarca with five locals (too many) to see the famous Cerro de Seite Colores (Hill of the Seven Colours), collected my things and thoughts back in Maimara and headed to Tilcara with only enough time to hurriedly hike to the waterfalls and back before the Argentina Mexico match. Considering the victory, the cold and the fact that it was Sunday, it is understandable that none of the museums I had wanted to see were open.

Unlike before, it seems most people are now heading in the same direction as me at the moment, so I caught a bus to the border with most of the other 18-odd guests staying at my hostel. Having waiting some time for the Bolivian border control to get more of the papers they needed to print my visa, I arrived at the train terminal to find the only tickets left were first class (Ejectivo) to Tupiza. Whilst it cost about three times the popular class, I’m secretly thrilled because I’ve had an extremely comfortable trip with lots of legroom, big windows and enough free seats to switch around when the view’s better on the other side. And I would never have paid the extra given a choice. Plus the complimentary ham and cheese roll and coke is almost all I’ve eaten all day. The only question now that I’m finally in Bolivia is which soccer team to support!

I took a bunch of photots out of the bus window, check out the album on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/stacey.hopebailie#!/album.php?aid=189493&id=504021698

Front seat on the bus! Yay for big windows!
Sunset from the train


Funeral procession down the streets of Villazon, amongst the buses


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