3pm
I’m sitting here at Parque El Arenal in Santa Cruz. The rushing waters of the fountain are dimmed by the noise of a worker welding together a part of the metal fence that surrounds this strange little park. There is a manmade lake with two tall fountains and a cement path around it filled with benches. There are actually quite a few people walking around the lake or sitting on the benches, most of them couples. In the middle of the lake, there is a cement island with some trees and greenery, but mostly filled with construction items. Like most places in Santa Cruz, it’s pretty run down with peeling paint, graffiti, and just doesn’t have the appearance that it is maintained.
Appearance-wise, I think Santa Cruz is the ugliest city that I’ve been in. The sky is finally blue right now, but yesterday was grey and humid and this morning was pretty gloomy as well. Although there are actually garbage cans around and therefore much less litter on the streets, most of the buildings are old and dirty. There are plenty of trees planted around the city, but it doesn’t have the natural surrounding beauty that I’ve seen in so many other places. It reminds me a bit of Lima, another city that in its move towards modernization, has left behind its cultural upkeep and just raced towards becoming much more commercial and westernized. Walking down the streets in the central area, there are mostly large stores with neat displays like I would find back home, some individual and some in towering malls. There are also the streets filled with salons or jewelry sellers, but it is all much more upscale than I’ve seen elsewhere. Cochabamba was also a bit like this, but I didn’t spend enough time there to get a real sense of the city. It’s really strange not to have a central market in which to wander, and it’s much harder to find vendors on the street or in the plaza. In Sucre, I was so used to buying ice cream on the street for 2 or 3Bs, but here it’s rare to find a vendor pushing around an ice cream cart – there are ice cream parlors everywhere that cost 3-4 times what they would elsewhere. Last night, everyone was walking around with a Styrofoam container filled with a massive amount of ice cream. I later discovered that it was half price on Tuesdays at one shop and there were mobs of people surrounding it, waiting with their tickets for quite a while for their delicacies to be prepared. The streets are crowded with micros, taxis, and private cars. Some intersections have traffic lights, which as usual are just for cars, not people, as cars always have right of way on turns. Though I was amazed today when a taxi actually stopped and let me cross the street in front of him. Usually I just need to run across whenever there’s a moment without cars, or dodge between them as they are stopped in traffic, often having to wait wedged between cars until I can pass another few meters. It’s become quite a habit to just cross wherever – there are sometimes crosswalks, but there are less cars in the middle of the street than at the intersection, so that’s where it is easiest to cross.
Santa Cruz has by far been the easiest city to navigate. Maybe I’m getting a better sense of direction, but it definitely helps that there are actually street signs on almost every corner. In other cities, if there are signs at all, the street name is painted on maybe on of the four corners so that you can only see it from certain angles. Usually, though, there is nothing on a corner and the only way to tell where you are is to find a building that has its address on a tiny placard above the door. Though most of the time, locals just know, so I would sometimes have to walk a block or two to figure out what intersection I was near. There also aren’t any hills here and the main part of the city is in an easily navigable grid. I think this is the first city that I actually know which direction is which on the map; I haven’t got lost once! Outside of the central area, the city branches out in numbered anillos (rings) and radiales (spokes) that connect the rings. Because the city has been developing so fast, I’ve done a bunch of useless wandering. My Lonely Planet guidebook is usually awesome at telling me where places are and how much things cost. It was written a year ago, but is way out of date for Santa Cruz. I go to a place where something is supposed to be, and it’s either moved or doesn’t exist anymore – that must have happened at least four times today!
Though Santa Cruz certainly isn’t the most attractive, it does have an interesting cultural environment to take in. Yesterday was a yet another holiday so aside from internet cafes and some restaurants, everything was closed. There were tons of people at these two giant café/restaurant/ice cream shops – Picolo and Dumbo’s. Both are huge buildings with balloons, countless staff, and people lounging for hours in large groups. The furniture was all brightly colored and the chairs were those interestingly shaped plastic kind. The sides of the cafes are lined with displays of endless baked goods and ice cream. Both of them have kids’ areas with plastic balls to jump in and colorful jungle gyms to climb all over. Those who weren’t at these family party places were spending their holiday afternoons at the central plaza – it was exploding with people sitting on benches - families, young and old couples, groups of friends. Kids run around and play while others relax with their coffee and cigarettes. There aren’t the typical vendors that I’ve always seen in plazas elsewhere, but there are old men pushing around carts filled with thermoses. Everyone buys little Styrofoam cups that he fills mostly with boiling hot milk to which he adds a shot of sweetened espresso. There’s a statue in the middle of the big plaza and tall trees all throughout. It is edged with the typical green shoe-shining stations. Near the towering church is an area with less trees where all of the pigeons congregate, chattering away as they walk and fly amongst the people. Most people seem to spend a good deal of their time just sitting and talking in the plaza – it’s always hard to find a spot on the bench, even though the park is filled with them. Life is very laid back in this bustling city, where the local pastime seems to be sitting outside or spending an afternoon at one of the many high end cafes. It’s an interesting experience to just sit amongst them and listen to the laughter and chattering around me.
Yesterday was the Aymara New Year, which occurs every year on the winter solstice. Very few crucenos (people of Santa Cruz) are of indigenous background – most Aymara people live on the other end of the country, and there were massive celebrations yesterday in the areas around La Paz, the biggest at the ruins of Tiwanaku. So here, I couldn’t find any festivities going on aside from people enjoying their days off of work (paid for all who work in any sort of official business). Walking the streets, I’ve encountered very few people in traditional dress, and those who I found were very impoverished, sitting on the sidewalks with their children, begging for money. At least in the central part of the city, there is very little poverty, though that which exists is very striking in contrast to the richer life that abounds. I’ve seen countless locals here with light skin, something that was very uncommon elsewhere in Bolivia aside from Cochabamba. Most everyone is dressed in modern clothing, carrying around fancy cell phones and digital cameras. Women walk in their high strappy shoes and boys are decked out with shiny tennis shoes and headphones. Children are pushed in strollers or carried in their mothers’ arms rather than strapped on their backs. It’s very clearly a city that is taking on ways of the western world, though it is unfortunately leaving a lot of its culture behind. Unlike everywhere else I’ve been, there’s no central market – there is a small Mercado on the outskirts of the city, but it’s not where everyone goes to do all their shopping – there are malls and grocery stores instead. It’s much harder here to find traditional meals, though the international cuisine is plentiful and supposed to be quite good (and expensive). For lunch, I found a vegetarian buffet with some pretty good options, though it charged by the kilo so I had to be very careful how much I put on my plate! For an early dinner, I went to a bakery that smelled absolutely amazing and everything looked so good – I had the person working there choose four of her favorite things for me. Wrapped in a banana leaf was a banana, yucca, and cheese delicacy, and there was a huminta with cheese and corn in a tamale leaf. Also had a little empanada of cheese, onions, and garlic, and a little cinnamon bun. Smelled so good, but there was nowhere to sit there and bask in the smell. Lucky people who work there! One of my favorite other pastries that they have around here is a cunape, which is doughy with cheese and some form of starch, slightly different each time – they are amazing when they are warm.
As one heads away from the city towards the surrounding jungle areas, there still exist colonial religious areas including a chain of Jesuit mission towns, as well as Amazonian communities. But in central Santa Cruz, that all seems to be washed away by the race towards modern ways of life. As I took the micro to the bus terminal on the outskirts of the city to get things figured out for our departure tomorrow, we definitely passed by areas that I was more used to seeing – frequent tiendas selling your basic home and food supplies, stalls of miscellaneous electronics, dustier people with more worn out clothes – an entirely different environment. In Sucre, old and new were perfectly blended together, but here, they are so much more distinctly apart. Nevertheless, it’s fascinating to walk around and watch the city and its developing culture pass me by.
There’s really not much to do here aside from stroll the streets, relax in the plaza, and eat. I went to one small museum this morning describing one Amazonian culture, and I’ll go to another this afternoon. Washed all my clothes in preparation for the jungle and I’m getting all of my electronics charged because it’s time for a month with no electricity, except for the occasional trip into town. Tomorrow I’m going to meet Tessa at the airport and then take two micros to the terminal, where we will take a bus for five hours to the town of Guarayos, and then catch another bus to reach the park. It looks like we may not be able to work with cats because there is a waiting list right now, so it may be monkeys and other smaller animals for us, and I’m also going to try to work a bit with the park vet. Though fingers crossed that I will still get a bit of interaction with some of the cats; I really want to go swimming with a puma!
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Horse, Bus, and Plane
6/21
Since my Uyuni tour was a day less than I had planned, I was going to spend two days in Tupiza and maybe even do an overnight horseback riding trip, staying the night in a little town. But there were rumors that there would be another bus strike on Monday and I couldn’t risk that when I needed to be in a town 8 hours away to catch my flight Tuesday morning. I was worried that the bus wouldn’t even run overnight/the strike would start after midnight Sunday night, so I got up early Sunday morning to find out. At the bus terminal, I was assured that there would still be night buses, so booked for an 8pm to Tarija. It was hard to find an open agency to book my horse since it was Sunday, but I eventually found one and scheduled a five hour ride starting at noon. There were not many tourists around and probably due to different skills levels and ride lengths, they booked every ride individually or by groups that came together. So including tip, I paid about 20 USD for a private five hour ride.
I had a few hours until my ride started, so I wandered around the tiny town. It was probably the smallest developed town that I’ve been to that hasn’t been completely tourist based. Got a bit confused navigating the city at times because street signs are almost never posted so I have to go by landmarks that I find in my guidebook – I walk one direction to find out if that is the way I want to go, and if not, it’s only a short distance to go the right way. There wasn’t any sightseeing to do in the town, but I spent time exploring the markets, passing by the same vendors multiple times as I circled around and found my way. Every city has a central market with a bread section, produce, rows of meat, and stalls with cheap meals, though usually meat. There is also usually a black market that has rows of electronics, personal and household supplies, clothing, homemade and fancier shoes, toys, and other random things. The markets in each city or town all have the same items but a different feel. The lowlands, highlands, north and south of the country – each area has a unique style of dress, a different indigenous population, different standards and ways of living. Hard to describe all of this but very interesting to experience as I encounter these markets everywhere I go.
A bit before noon, I collected my things from my hostel and headed over to the tour agency, where I was able to leave all of my belongings for the day. My guide came to pick me up and we walked a couple blocks to catch a micro to where the horses were kept. Luis was eighteen and finishing up high school. When he wasn’t in school, he worked constantly with the horses and hoped to go to the veterinary school in Tupiza to become a horse veterinarian. I really wish I could have talked to him more, but I had no voice at all and my throat hurt quite a bit. Riding probably wasn’t the best thing to do to get better, but I was there and I’d planned to ride here since before I came, so it was going to happen. I talked at times in a whisper, but it’s hard to have a conversation that way, especially when it is windy and you are on a horse. So most of the ride passed without talk, but there was plenty around to hear and see.
When we got to the stable, a few people were finishing nailing shoes onto my horse and wrapping his hocks with a blue bandage material. Apparently he has the tendency to kick rocks at himself as he walks, so they always wrap him before a ride. There were a good number of other horses roaming freely in a large pasture. As I waited, I played with a tiny pup who must have only been a few weeks old, her mother watching closely as I held her and then grooming her intensively once I put her back down. My horse, Terrible, was tall and brown with a blonde mane and was definitely one of the better looking horses that I saw during the day. Luis rode a shorter white horse. I made sure when I signed up for the tour to ask for a fast horse and say that I had riding experience, and although I definitely ended up with a stubborn horse, he was good to ride. As we made our way out of the corral area, Terrible decided that he didn’t want to leave and started running back into the pasture, ignoring my pulls on the reins. Great start! But once we got him out of there and onto the main road, he was mostly cooperative, though had a strong personality. The first part of the ride was directly along the railroad, walking in the middle of the tracks. Terrible knew the route so I didn’t guide him much, but was able to observe my surroundings and take pictures. I got to ride in front and set the pace, Luis following behind me, so there was no horse butt in front of me, just the vast surroundings. After turning off the railroad tracks, we followed a red dirt road up and over the mountains, exposing a gorgeous red countryside with scattered cacti and other greenery. Chirping of the birds, sighing of the horses, the steady clip clop of their walks, and the strong whooshing of the wind surrounded us, but there was no hint of any form of civilization. The horses walked and trotted most of the time, the road very rocky beneath their feet.
Without a voice, I had a hard time imitating the sounds that Luis made to speed up the horses and Terrible didn’t respond well to kicks to his flank, so I had to rely on Luis to tell the horses when to speed up. There were several times when we galloped and cantered through the countryside, barely missing the cacti along the sides of the path, moving against the strong wind and pulling up dust, racing through the gorgeous surroundings. There was no horn on the saddle so it was harder than usual to maintain my balance, but I managed and loved when we sped through the changing landscapes, and Terrible seemed to enjoy the frolics as well. We descended down into an amazing red canyon, flanked by tall walls on all sides, and galloped on through a narrow passageway between rocks as we approached the depths of the canyon . The horses rested as I walked around and snapped pictures, the scenery changing as the clouds raced by and the sun hid and emerged again from behind large rocks as the afternoon made its way into evening. Even with my sunglasses, the views in some directions were only dark silhouettes of towering peaks of the canyon, whereas others were brightly colored with the contrast of red and green, backed by fluffy white clouds and the bright blue sky. I tried to get pictures with Terrible in the forefront, but he was very camera shy and it was hard to get a good shot. During the afternoon, we rode to several canyons, a formation known as the door of the devil, and an area with rocks that looked like figures of men. As the sun began to lower, we rode back along the railroad tracks. At one point, Luis stopped to talk to someone and told me to continue along, but Terrible froze after a little bit, refusing to walk until the other horse caught up. I dismounted a few blocks away from the central area and Luis walked the two horses back to their corral.
My bus to Tarija was my second night bus in a row, arriving at my destination again at 4am. It was a comfortable, quiet ride and I actually managed to get a little bit of sleep, though not enough given that I was trying to recover from a lost voice and a sore throat. Tarija was a much bigger city than Tupiza and actually had street signs, which was very exciting. Being near the border, it had a strong Argentine influence in the style of its plaza, churches, and other buildings. Both mornings there, I got breakfast at the Mercado Central. There was a row of women with their stoves, all trying to grab the people walking by to dine at their stall. The traditional fare is api (a delicious, steaming hot spiced purple corn drink) and pasteles (fried dough) either filled with cheese or topped with syrup and powdered sugar. Also got some Argentine pastries from the bakery section of the market, and of course I can never resist the fresh juice section. I wandered a bit around the markets and went to one museum that had some cool fossils of large animals from the region including a giant ground sloth the size of an elephant and a huge armadillo-like creature. All throughout the day, there was some sort of religious celebration based from one of the schools – I constantly heard music and saw people parading around with blue and silver décor. Tarija was another very quiet and laid back town with many modern stores, though it still had a traditional feel to it. Finding food that I could eat was quite difficult because given the proximity to Argentina, meat was a huge thing – finally had to settle on yet another pizza. It was strangely difficult to find an internet café, which are usually on every corner – I finally ran across a street filled with a row of them, all of which were stuffed with teenagers playing computer games or browsing facebook. I didn’t see another tourist during my day there. Tarija is renowned for its nearby wine country and is the base point for trips there, but it’s mostly just a passing through point and not much of a tourist attraction. But it was really nice to be away from the bustle of tourists and just see the town as it was, Argentine flavor throughout.
After a breakfast at the market the next morning, I took a taxi to the airport. I got dropped off outside the airport and paid half as much as I would have had he driven me the extra 100 meters inside the entrance of the tiny place. I got there a little over an hour early and I was the only passenger so far; had to wait another half hour go through security, which took less than a minute and I didn’t have to take off my shoes or jacket or remove my liquids or electronics! It was so much more relaxed than a US airport – no annoying security announcements or massive crowds of hurried people. There was actually wifi there, so easily passed the time before my flight. Just a few minutes after we lifted off, they told us that we could use portable electronic devices; we usually have to wait to 10,000 feet to do this! I took the cheapest Bolivian airline but it was so much nicer than most flights in the US. For an hour flight, they gave us a drink plus a refill as well as a little snack box – a muffin and a meat empanada on my first flight, and a pastry filled with dulce de leche and a cheese empanada on the second. We landed in Cochabamba, took the stairs off the plane and into the airport, and went through security again. It was very different from the place that I had come – there were businesspeople with their briefcases and laptops, fancy purses and sunglasses. The wifi at the airport wasn’t free, and all of the little cafes were much pricier. This airport had four gates rather than two, and had quite impressive architecture inside. After an hour of waiting, we walked back outside and boarded the same plane on which I had arrived. It was a short flight to Santa Cruz and we actually got off the plane through a gate and walked through the airport without going outside. Luckily getting my luggage was no problem. Oh, I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it, but my zipper on my backpack broke yet again during my Uyuni trip and at this point I won’t be using my backpack too much more, so I’m just going around with safety pins and a buckle and it’s survived so far with that. Outside, I was very surprised by the sticky warm air of Santa Cruz and spent my first day in a long time without a jacket. Taxis from the airport were ridiculously expensive, but there were nice buses that headed towards the center. I got to sit in the front seat and have my big pack next to me, and the driver told me where to get off to walk a few blocks to my hostel. My voice was slowly coming back in croaks, but my ears were a complete mess from the two flights and it was hard to hear for quite a while. By later in the day, though, I could both speak and hear again, very exciting!
Since my Uyuni tour was a day less than I had planned, I was going to spend two days in Tupiza and maybe even do an overnight horseback riding trip, staying the night in a little town. But there were rumors that there would be another bus strike on Monday and I couldn’t risk that when I needed to be in a town 8 hours away to catch my flight Tuesday morning. I was worried that the bus wouldn’t even run overnight/the strike would start after midnight Sunday night, so I got up early Sunday morning to find out. At the bus terminal, I was assured that there would still be night buses, so booked for an 8pm to Tarija. It was hard to find an open agency to book my horse since it was Sunday, but I eventually found one and scheduled a five hour ride starting at noon. There were not many tourists around and probably due to different skills levels and ride lengths, they booked every ride individually or by groups that came together. So including tip, I paid about 20 USD for a private five hour ride.
I had a few hours until my ride started, so I wandered around the tiny town. It was probably the smallest developed town that I’ve been to that hasn’t been completely tourist based. Got a bit confused navigating the city at times because street signs are almost never posted so I have to go by landmarks that I find in my guidebook – I walk one direction to find out if that is the way I want to go, and if not, it’s only a short distance to go the right way. There wasn’t any sightseeing to do in the town, but I spent time exploring the markets, passing by the same vendors multiple times as I circled around and found my way. Every city has a central market with a bread section, produce, rows of meat, and stalls with cheap meals, though usually meat. There is also usually a black market that has rows of electronics, personal and household supplies, clothing, homemade and fancier shoes, toys, and other random things. The markets in each city or town all have the same items but a different feel. The lowlands, highlands, north and south of the country – each area has a unique style of dress, a different indigenous population, different standards and ways of living. Hard to describe all of this but very interesting to experience as I encounter these markets everywhere I go.
A bit before noon, I collected my things from my hostel and headed over to the tour agency, where I was able to leave all of my belongings for the day. My guide came to pick me up and we walked a couple blocks to catch a micro to where the horses were kept. Luis was eighteen and finishing up high school. When he wasn’t in school, he worked constantly with the horses and hoped to go to the veterinary school in Tupiza to become a horse veterinarian. I really wish I could have talked to him more, but I had no voice at all and my throat hurt quite a bit. Riding probably wasn’t the best thing to do to get better, but I was there and I’d planned to ride here since before I came, so it was going to happen. I talked at times in a whisper, but it’s hard to have a conversation that way, especially when it is windy and you are on a horse. So most of the ride passed without talk, but there was plenty around to hear and see.
When we got to the stable, a few people were finishing nailing shoes onto my horse and wrapping his hocks with a blue bandage material. Apparently he has the tendency to kick rocks at himself as he walks, so they always wrap him before a ride. There were a good number of other horses roaming freely in a large pasture. As I waited, I played with a tiny pup who must have only been a few weeks old, her mother watching closely as I held her and then grooming her intensively once I put her back down. My horse, Terrible, was tall and brown with a blonde mane and was definitely one of the better looking horses that I saw during the day. Luis rode a shorter white horse. I made sure when I signed up for the tour to ask for a fast horse and say that I had riding experience, and although I definitely ended up with a stubborn horse, he was good to ride. As we made our way out of the corral area, Terrible decided that he didn’t want to leave and started running back into the pasture, ignoring my pulls on the reins. Great start! But once we got him out of there and onto the main road, he was mostly cooperative, though had a strong personality. The first part of the ride was directly along the railroad, walking in the middle of the tracks. Terrible knew the route so I didn’t guide him much, but was able to observe my surroundings and take pictures. I got to ride in front and set the pace, Luis following behind me, so there was no horse butt in front of me, just the vast surroundings. After turning off the railroad tracks, we followed a red dirt road up and over the mountains, exposing a gorgeous red countryside with scattered cacti and other greenery. Chirping of the birds, sighing of the horses, the steady clip clop of their walks, and the strong whooshing of the wind surrounded us, but there was no hint of any form of civilization. The horses walked and trotted most of the time, the road very rocky beneath their feet.
Without a voice, I had a hard time imitating the sounds that Luis made to speed up the horses and Terrible didn’t respond well to kicks to his flank, so I had to rely on Luis to tell the horses when to speed up. There were several times when we galloped and cantered through the countryside, barely missing the cacti along the sides of the path, moving against the strong wind and pulling up dust, racing through the gorgeous surroundings. There was no horn on the saddle so it was harder than usual to maintain my balance, but I managed and loved when we sped through the changing landscapes, and Terrible seemed to enjoy the frolics as well. We descended down into an amazing red canyon, flanked by tall walls on all sides, and galloped on through a narrow passageway between rocks as we approached the depths of the canyon . The horses rested as I walked around and snapped pictures, the scenery changing as the clouds raced by and the sun hid and emerged again from behind large rocks as the afternoon made its way into evening. Even with my sunglasses, the views in some directions were only dark silhouettes of towering peaks of the canyon, whereas others were brightly colored with the contrast of red and green, backed by fluffy white clouds and the bright blue sky. I tried to get pictures with Terrible in the forefront, but he was very camera shy and it was hard to get a good shot. During the afternoon, we rode to several canyons, a formation known as the door of the devil, and an area with rocks that looked like figures of men. As the sun began to lower, we rode back along the railroad tracks. At one point, Luis stopped to talk to someone and told me to continue along, but Terrible froze after a little bit, refusing to walk until the other horse caught up. I dismounted a few blocks away from the central area and Luis walked the two horses back to their corral. My bus to Tarija was my second night bus in a row, arriving at my destination again at 4am. It was a comfortable, quiet ride and I actually managed to get a little bit of sleep, though not enough given that I was trying to recover from a lost voice and a sore throat. Tarija was a much bigger city than Tupiza and actually had street signs, which was very exciting. Being near the border, it had a strong Argentine influence in the style of its plaza, churches, and other buildings. Both mornings there, I got breakfast at the Mercado Central. There was a row of women with their stoves, all trying to grab the people walking by to dine at their stall. The traditional fare is api (a delicious, steaming hot spiced purple corn drink) and pasteles (fried dough) either filled with cheese or topped with syrup and powdered sugar. Also got some Argentine pastries from the bakery section of the market, and of course I can never resist the fresh juice section. I wandered a bit around the markets and went to one museum that had some cool fossils of large animals from the region including a giant ground sloth the size of an elephant and a huge armadillo-like creature. All throughout the day, there was some sort of religious celebration based from one of the schools – I constantly heard music and saw people parading around with blue and silver décor. Tarija was another very quiet and laid back town with many modern stores, though it still had a traditional feel to it. Finding food that I could eat was quite difficult because given the proximity to Argentina, meat was a huge thing – finally had to settle on yet another pizza. It was strangely difficult to find an internet café, which are usually on every corner – I finally ran across a street filled with a row of them, all of which were stuffed with teenagers playing computer games or browsing facebook. I didn’t see another tourist during my day there. Tarija is renowned for its nearby wine country and is the base point for trips there, but it’s mostly just a passing through point and not much of a tourist attraction. But it was really nice to be away from the bustle of tourists and just see the town as it was, Argentine flavor throughout.
After a breakfast at the market the next morning, I took a taxi to the airport. I got dropped off outside the airport and paid half as much as I would have had he driven me the extra 100 meters inside the entrance of the tiny place. I got there a little over an hour early and I was the only passenger so far; had to wait another half hour go through security, which took less than a minute and I didn’t have to take off my shoes or jacket or remove my liquids or electronics! It was so much more relaxed than a US airport – no annoying security announcements or massive crowds of hurried people. There was actually wifi there, so easily passed the time before my flight. Just a few minutes after we lifted off, they told us that we could use portable electronic devices; we usually have to wait to 10,000 feet to do this! I took the cheapest Bolivian airline but it was so much nicer than most flights in the US. For an hour flight, they gave us a drink plus a refill as well as a little snack box – a muffin and a meat empanada on my first flight, and a pastry filled with dulce de leche and a cheese empanada on the second. We landed in Cochabamba, took the stairs off the plane and into the airport, and went through security again. It was very different from the place that I had come – there were businesspeople with their briefcases and laptops, fancy purses and sunglasses. The wifi at the airport wasn’t free, and all of the little cafes were much pricier. This airport had four gates rather than two, and had quite impressive architecture inside. After an hour of waiting, we walked back outside and boarded the same plane on which I had arrived. It was a short flight to Santa Cruz and we actually got off the plane through a gate and walked through the airport without going outside. Luckily getting my luggage was no problem. Oh, I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it, but my zipper on my backpack broke yet again during my Uyuni trip and at this point I won’t be using my backpack too much more, so I’m just going around with safety pins and a buckle and it’s survived so far with that. Outside, I was very surprised by the sticky warm air of Santa Cruz and spent my first day in a long time without a jacket. Taxis from the airport were ridiculously expensive, but there were nice buses that headed towards the center. I got to sit in the front seat and have my big pack next to me, and the driver told me where to get off to walk a few blocks to my hostel. My voice was slowly coming back in croaks, but my ears were a complete mess from the two flights and it was hard to hear for quite a while. By later in the day, though, I could both speak and hear again, very exciting!
Monday, June 20, 2011
Indescribable Landscapes
6/20/11 4:20am
I’m sitting here at the station after a night bus to Tarija, waiting for it to get a little later so I can check in to a hostel without having to pay an extra night. My ears are popping from all this altitude change – though now I’m under 2000m and will be around this level for the rest of my trip. Tons and tons to catch up on from the last few days.
Given my good luck with buses, the trip from Potosi to Uyuni on Wednesday was of course an adventure. I was told the bus would leave at 10 sharp, but at 10, there was no bus in the designated spot. It finally pulled up and we all piled in and left around 10:30. Okay, not too bad yet, that was to be expected. About an hour in, we stop for half an hour or so as the driver fixes a flat time, and then on we go. But another hour later, we just stop cold and most of the locals get out, so we follow. The only foreigners on our bus were a couple from Holland and Oliver from Germany who was also ultimately heading for Tupiza. We sat outside in the middle of nowhere – a very pretty middle of nowhere, but still, it was a bit stressful having no idea how long we would be sitting there since we were apparently waiting for something. The driver said we were waiting for another bus to switch to, but a very angry woman ranted to me that we were just waiting for someone to bring something to repair the bus and it would take longer still. After waiting an hour with no solid word on what was going on, us travelers pretty stressed out and the locals just lounging around like this is an every day occurrence, another travel bus that was pretty empty pulled up. We ran up to it and asked them if we could get on, and then ran back and tried to get our driver to get our bags down from the roof. He was quite angry about it and resisted, but eventually threw them down at us with a scowl and we made our way over to the other bus. We had to pay a large portion of the bus ticket all over again, but it was worth knowing that we would actually get to Uyuni – we needed to get there before too late in order to book tours to leave the next morning. The new bus was much faster and sturdier and we got to Uyuni much earlier than we expected – the ideal trip would take six hours, but even with all of our mishaps, we got there in seven.
Picking a tour agency is tricky because every random company from the street tries to grab you and engage you in conversation and get you on their trip. But there are so many horror stories about Uyuni trips gone wrong with awful cars, drunk or crazy drivers, bad food, skipping out on promised places to visit, too many passengers, etc. Oliver and I wanted to find a four day trip that left us in Tupiza, but those don’t seem to exist unless you can get the group of four to six people to yourselves, so it was to be Uyuni back to Uyuni and then a night bus to Tupiza. We checked out a couple of the agencies that we had heard good things about and settled on one, Emprexsa. They told us that we would be with some people who were arriving from La Paz in the morning. But when we waited outside the following morning after a nice but expensive breakfast, the office was closed and there was no site of the owner for quite a while after the designated meeting time. So typical here, but still not used to it. Eventually she showed up, and then a nice shiny black jeep pulled up and we got in. We picked up Jung (Korea) from another agency down the block, and then Steven (Belgium), Mike (US), and Juergen (Germany) from a third agency, Red Planet. It seems our La Paz people didn’t show up or something so they loaded us on with Red Planet, but we got really lucky and that agency was a good one.
The six of us and our driver/guide/book Faustino piled into the jeep and set off first towards the train cemetery. I had purposefully not looked at many pictures of the trip beforehand, so the scenery never stopped amazing me. The train cemetery was old, dusty, windy, and rusty, but was filled with abandoned old cargo trains that had never been upkept. After the station was abandoned, people ransacked it and took parts of trains and knocked over others. With the weather, the trains are now merely red and brown metal skeletons, but it was still a really cool sight. I of course needed to climb up on whatever challenging parts I could find, and it was fun to walk across the top of the train and see endless train skeletons and desert in the distance. Getting down was always harder than up and took some creativity, especially with my short legs, but it was worth it. A bit like metal rock climbing, needing to find grips for your hands and feet and use arm strength to pull yourself up at certain points while dangling below.
Back in the jeep, it was then on to the little town of Colchani on the outskirts of the Salar where they process salt. They were selling tourist goods made entirely of salt, and we got out first glimpses of the expansive white fields with lined up piles of scooped packed salt ready to be loaded into a big truck and taken for processing. Then into the Salar we drove, stopping to play a bit where workers were busy making salt piles. It was such a strange experience to see the white-covered group and expect it to be wet, slippery, and cold like snow, but it was none of the above, just salt. One of thje best things about the Salar is that you can take some really amazing pictures because of the endless white into the horizon. You can play around with perspective and the angle of the camera and have jumping pictures look like you are flying, have someone who is behind some else look like they are being eaten or stomped on, make people really small in compared to objects, etc. We were really lucky to have Juergen, a professional photographer, in our group, so got some extra amazing pictures. Which the computer won´t let me upload right now! It took quite a bit of thought to figure out how to get the perspective right to get the photo we wanted, and it would have taken me a ton longer. There are endless kinds of photos you can take on the Salar, and I wished I had brought along a dinosaur figure and things of the sort, but we made do and got some really cool pictures regardless. After taking in the salt pile scenery for a bit, we had to move along to the salt hotel for lunch. The food was pretty good through the entire trip and I always got a decent substitution for my vegetarian option. We ate inside a building made entirely (except the roof) from bricks of salt. The chairs and tables were salt as well, covered with cloths and cushions. There was a little museum in back with more salt furniture, a salt bedroom, and large salt animal figures.
Then it was on to Isla Incahuasi, a really strange phenomenon to take in. Forever in the distance were white flats of salt, but there was an island in the middle full of cacti and hardened corals. Over one thousand years ago, this entire area used to be under water (and the salt planes are still under water during the rainy season), but there is now a rocky desert in the middle of the salt. With the chilly air and endless white scenery, it really feels like you are in the snow, so it’s quite the odd and confusing to see “snow” and cacti side by side. It was getting late in the day, so we just had a little over the hour to hike the island and then move down to take pictures in the endless white, the perspective undisturbed by any piles of snow or working trucks. We played more with our cameras in the salt until we were dragged off so that we would see the sunset over the water and arrive at the hostel before dark. From the car, we could tell that the salt on which we drove was segmented into perfect hexagons and other shapes, caused by a relationship between the sun drying up water between the cracks and the pressure of the salt lake underneath.
As evening begin to descend, we drove into the water-filled part of the planes. During the summer/rainy season, the entire Salar is covered in water, and at this point, we get the best of both worlds with much of it dried out but still a large portion remaining a shallow lake. We drove on through the lake, watching the waves that we and the other jeeps created. There was an incredible sunset over the lake and at one point there was a salt dune where we were able to get out, take pictures, and try not to freeze while taking in this indescribable site, so different than a typical sunset over a lake with the knowledge that this was all salt.
The day nearing its end, we headed to our salt hostel for the night, another building with practically everything (though thankfully not the mattresses) made of salt. We warmed up with tea and cookies before dinner. Outside, the near full moon rose surrounded by a circle of clouds that it dyed a bright yellow – a very nice sight to eat dinner to! After the electricity went out at 9, the only illumination for miles was from this bright yellow moon.
We got up in the morning to breakfast with a gorgeous sunrise over the Salar, and then headed out for the day. It was sad to leave the Salar, where I could have easily spent a lot more time, but there were many more things to come. We drove off into an endless desert, stopping to take in the scenery and take pictures at a set of abandoned railroad tracks. In the horizon were snow-capped mountains and volcanoes of both Bolivia and Chile. We stopped again at an area with volcanic rock formations amidst their astounding background. In the distance, we could see smoke emerging from a semi-active volcano. It was near silent out here aside from the sounds of our footsteps on the rocky ground and the constant clicks of our cameras.
Next came a series of lakes, each appearing after we rounded another bend. They smelled of sulfur, which must have been rundown from nearby volcanoes. Many of the lakes were surrounded in white material, which Faustino told us was calcium carbonate. There were occasionally tiny settlements near the mountains where people used to collect sulfur, but the price is almost nothing now so they have abandoned the practice, leaving one person there as a caretaker of the equipment and facilities. The most fascinating and unique lake was Laguna Colorado. The waters are red from the presence of red algae and other bioorganisms. During the wet season, thousands of flamingos inhabit the lake, but migrate during the summer to Chile or to the more tropical regions around Cochabamba within Bolivia. The older flamingos, however, stay year round, as it is too much for them to migrate. The lake is filled with toxic chemicals including sulfur and arsenic from the surrounding mountains, but the flamingos are able to use their breaks in a manner to filter out the toxins and only take in the delicious algae, thus maintaining their bright colors. So we saw a good number of flamingos but could only imagine what it looks like flooded with flamingos in January and February. In contrast with the strange red water of the lake were yellow banks, brown hills, and distant snow-capped mountains. Fluffy clouds scattered the sky throughout the day and were a really nice addition to the scenery. They would race through the bright blue sky, changing shape, as their corresponding shadows sped alongside the mountains. As we drove through the changing landscapes, we could sometimes see the huge dust clouds created by nearby jeeps as well as our own, and sometimes we were the only car, nothing in the distance but vast desert, the only sign of life being old tire tracks. At the highest points in these open deserts live only vicunas (part of the llama family, but so petite and graceful that I at first thought they were antelope), a chinchilla-like creature, and flamingos. Further down in the altiplano there are llamas, sheep, and other animals that you would expect to see, but it was fairly desolate at 4000m plus.
We also went to the Pierdra de Arbol, a formation of volcanic rocks where the most famous rock resembles a tree. The tree was impressive, but more so was the collection of volcanic rocks that surrounded it. It was late in the afternoon and the wind was insane, sand blowing everything, so it was quite the environment. I of course climbed to the top of one of the rocks and stood at the top, but was practically tipped over by the wind and had to use all my strength to maintain standing. My eyes were streaming in tears from the bitter cold wind, and I had to hold tightly to my hat and scarf, which the wind constantly tried to snatch away. A nose muff would have been perfect, but I unfortunately didn’t have any clown noses in the car. We eventually climbed back into the warm jeep, frozen but exhilarated. This set of volcanic rocks is very weak and brittle. In the early morning, the rocks are very cold, but heat up and become malleable midday. With the strong winds of the early evenings, bits and pieces of the rocks are constantly eroded away, so this landscape will eventually disappear bit by bit.
We hid inside at our next hostel, seeking shelter from the cold strong winds and swirls of dust. After our tea and cookies, we played cards until dinner, which was pretty basic spaghetti but finished with a good bottle of wine from Tarija in place of dessert. My zipper luck continues and just as I was about to go to bed, the zipper that had been fixed on my big pack broke again and I was unable to get it back on the track. So back to safety pins and a buckle it was, and at this point I’m just going to leave it be since I won’t be moving around very much anymore and this is becoming too much of a pain.
All night long, there was pattering on the metal roof. We were supposed to get up at 5:30 to begin our journey and eat breakfast later on, but we got knocks on our doors at 5:20 saying that it was snowing and way too windy and dark to go out yet, so we would eat breakfast at the hostel at 6. It was a little lighter by the time we left, but there was still a constant swirl of white and it was hard to see more than a few feet in front of the car, let alone which direction the road even curved. Luckily our guide was a very good driver, though scared us quite a few times as he drove quickly through the white abyss. We were going to visit the geysers, but as we passed the turnoff at 4900m, it was clear that there was no way we would be able to see anything, so we had to skip that bit. We continued on to a lake with hot springs. The strong winds and intense snow had stopped, but it was still cold to go into the bath knowing that we would have to get out of it again – some other groups did, but none of us went for it. This was my first ever snowstorm, so although I was disappointed to miss the geysers and hot springs, it was definitely an adventure clinging to the seats as we hoped that Faustino knew what he was doing. Standing outside, I was really excited by the snowflakes that fell on me – I don’t think I’ve been in anything more than a snow flurry where the flakes disappear right away, but these stayed on my clothes, shaped in perfect geometrical patterns as if cut out from paper and shrunk down.
There had been uncertainty about whether we would be able to drop off people in Chile or not, if the border would be open given the weather, but we eventually sent Jung, who was going to Chile, with another group and took an Australia from that jeep back to Uyuni with us. The third day was the least exciting of the three, and I wish they had spread out the main sites better, or saved the Salar for the last day, which can only be done if no one in the group needs to be dropped off at the Chilean border. We spent most of the day just driving, which was gorgeous but got more tiring than the other days because there were less things to see that were unique and completely breathtaking. We had been near 5000 meters and watched the landscape change drastically as we moved away from the high lakes and vast deserts with scarce greenish shrubbery. In the altiplano, the fields got greener and more towns appeared, most of them based in quinoa harvest, though the fields are currently empty due to the season. We stopped on the way at a few more sights, my favorite being another huge formation of volcanic rocks onto which I climbed way up, finding shelter from the wind between two nearby layers.
I had much more to write during the trip but nothing else is coming out right now, though I guess this is quite long as it is. Back in Uyuni, I got dinner with the guys and then Oliver and I began our journey to Tupiza. We had bought our bus ticket earlier but once we got to the station, we were told that we were moved to another company because their bus wasn’t running that night. After a complicated mess of things, I went back to the ticket lady to sort something our, leaving all of my bags on the sidewalk with Oliver. Suddenly saw the bus drive away and even though it was way before it was time for the bus to leave, this scared me quite a bit and I ran after it until I saw Oliver giving a thumbs up through the window. The bus was just making a u-turn and going to a different spot. Definitely not a fun experience, especially with having to break into a sudden sprint at that altitude! The bus ride was uncomfortable and shaky because the road was so awful. They squeezed people into the aisles. At least I had a seat, but it got partially taken over at times. There was a young woman with her baby sitting in the aisle next to me, and her husband sat in front of her on some sack (which is very rare to see a guy traveling with or even helping a young mother). The baby was adorable, hardly crying, just looking around with a constant giddy look on her face, her mouth open in joy over every little thing. I fell asleep on and off, and woke up once to find the dad had wedged his feet into what little room my feet weren’t using in front of me, and the mom was sitting on my armrest and taking up a good amount of my chair with her back. Squished! We eventually got to Tupiza at 4am and decided to get a hostel for a few hours to get a little bit of sleep. Tupiza details later, it’s late enough now to go find a place in Tarija.
Oh, at some point during this whole adventure, I lost my voice, and it´s still gone. Not good..
I’m sitting here at the station after a night bus to Tarija, waiting for it to get a little later so I can check in to a hostel without having to pay an extra night. My ears are popping from all this altitude change – though now I’m under 2000m and will be around this level for the rest of my trip. Tons and tons to catch up on from the last few days.
Given my good luck with buses, the trip from Potosi to Uyuni on Wednesday was of course an adventure. I was told the bus would leave at 10 sharp, but at 10, there was no bus in the designated spot. It finally pulled up and we all piled in and left around 10:30. Okay, not too bad yet, that was to be expected. About an hour in, we stop for half an hour or so as the driver fixes a flat time, and then on we go. But another hour later, we just stop cold and most of the locals get out, so we follow. The only foreigners on our bus were a couple from Holland and Oliver from Germany who was also ultimately heading for Tupiza. We sat outside in the middle of nowhere – a very pretty middle of nowhere, but still, it was a bit stressful having no idea how long we would be sitting there since we were apparently waiting for something. The driver said we were waiting for another bus to switch to, but a very angry woman ranted to me that we were just waiting for someone to bring something to repair the bus and it would take longer still. After waiting an hour with no solid word on what was going on, us travelers pretty stressed out and the locals just lounging around like this is an every day occurrence, another travel bus that was pretty empty pulled up. We ran up to it and asked them if we could get on, and then ran back and tried to get our driver to get our bags down from the roof. He was quite angry about it and resisted, but eventually threw them down at us with a scowl and we made our way over to the other bus. We had to pay a large portion of the bus ticket all over again, but it was worth knowing that we would actually get to Uyuni – we needed to get there before too late in order to book tours to leave the next morning. The new bus was much faster and sturdier and we got to Uyuni much earlier than we expected – the ideal trip would take six hours, but even with all of our mishaps, we got there in seven.
Picking a tour agency is tricky because every random company from the street tries to grab you and engage you in conversation and get you on their trip. But there are so many horror stories about Uyuni trips gone wrong with awful cars, drunk or crazy drivers, bad food, skipping out on promised places to visit, too many passengers, etc. Oliver and I wanted to find a four day trip that left us in Tupiza, but those don’t seem to exist unless you can get the group of four to six people to yourselves, so it was to be Uyuni back to Uyuni and then a night bus to Tupiza. We checked out a couple of the agencies that we had heard good things about and settled on one, Emprexsa. They told us that we would be with some people who were arriving from La Paz in the morning. But when we waited outside the following morning after a nice but expensive breakfast, the office was closed and there was no site of the owner for quite a while after the designated meeting time. So typical here, but still not used to it. Eventually she showed up, and then a nice shiny black jeep pulled up and we got in. We picked up Jung (Korea) from another agency down the block, and then Steven (Belgium), Mike (US), and Juergen (Germany) from a third agency, Red Planet. It seems our La Paz people didn’t show up or something so they loaded us on with Red Planet, but we got really lucky and that agency was a good one.
The six of us and our driver/guide/book Faustino piled into the jeep and set off first towards the train cemetery. I had purposefully not looked at many pictures of the trip beforehand, so the scenery never stopped amazing me. The train cemetery was old, dusty, windy, and rusty, but was filled with abandoned old cargo trains that had never been upkept. After the station was abandoned, people ransacked it and took parts of trains and knocked over others. With the weather, the trains are now merely red and brown metal skeletons, but it was still a really cool sight. I of course needed to climb up on whatever challenging parts I could find, and it was fun to walk across the top of the train and see endless train skeletons and desert in the distance. Getting down was always harder than up and took some creativity, especially with my short legs, but it was worth it. A bit like metal rock climbing, needing to find grips for your hands and feet and use arm strength to pull yourself up at certain points while dangling below.
Back in the jeep, it was then on to the little town of Colchani on the outskirts of the Salar where they process salt. They were selling tourist goods made entirely of salt, and we got out first glimpses of the expansive white fields with lined up piles of scooped packed salt ready to be loaded into a big truck and taken for processing. Then into the Salar we drove, stopping to play a bit where workers were busy making salt piles. It was such a strange experience to see the white-covered group and expect it to be wet, slippery, and cold like snow, but it was none of the above, just salt. One of thje best things about the Salar is that you can take some really amazing pictures because of the endless white into the horizon. You can play around with perspective and the angle of the camera and have jumping pictures look like you are flying, have someone who is behind some else look like they are being eaten or stomped on, make people really small in compared to objects, etc. We were really lucky to have Juergen, a professional photographer, in our group, so got some extra amazing pictures. Which the computer won´t let me upload right now! It took quite a bit of thought to figure out how to get the perspective right to get the photo we wanted, and it would have taken me a ton longer. There are endless kinds of photos you can take on the Salar, and I wished I had brought along a dinosaur figure and things of the sort, but we made do and got some really cool pictures regardless. After taking in the salt pile scenery for a bit, we had to move along to the salt hotel for lunch. The food was pretty good through the entire trip and I always got a decent substitution for my vegetarian option. We ate inside a building made entirely (except the roof) from bricks of salt. The chairs and tables were salt as well, covered with cloths and cushions. There was a little museum in back with more salt furniture, a salt bedroom, and large salt animal figures.
Then it was on to Isla Incahuasi, a really strange phenomenon to take in. Forever in the distance were white flats of salt, but there was an island in the middle full of cacti and hardened corals. Over one thousand years ago, this entire area used to be under water (and the salt planes are still under water during the rainy season), but there is now a rocky desert in the middle of the salt. With the chilly air and endless white scenery, it really feels like you are in the snow, so it’s quite the odd and confusing to see “snow” and cacti side by side. It was getting late in the day, so we just had a little over the hour to hike the island and then move down to take pictures in the endless white, the perspective undisturbed by any piles of snow or working trucks. We played more with our cameras in the salt until we were dragged off so that we would see the sunset over the water and arrive at the hostel before dark. From the car, we could tell that the salt on which we drove was segmented into perfect hexagons and other shapes, caused by a relationship between the sun drying up water between the cracks and the pressure of the salt lake underneath.
As evening begin to descend, we drove into the water-filled part of the planes. During the summer/rainy season, the entire Salar is covered in water, and at this point, we get the best of both worlds with much of it dried out but still a large portion remaining a shallow lake. We drove on through the lake, watching the waves that we and the other jeeps created. There was an incredible sunset over the lake and at one point there was a salt dune where we were able to get out, take pictures, and try not to freeze while taking in this indescribable site, so different than a typical sunset over a lake with the knowledge that this was all salt.
The day nearing its end, we headed to our salt hostel for the night, another building with practically everything (though thankfully not the mattresses) made of salt. We warmed up with tea and cookies before dinner. Outside, the near full moon rose surrounded by a circle of clouds that it dyed a bright yellow – a very nice sight to eat dinner to! After the electricity went out at 9, the only illumination for miles was from this bright yellow moon.
We got up in the morning to breakfast with a gorgeous sunrise over the Salar, and then headed out for the day. It was sad to leave the Salar, where I could have easily spent a lot more time, but there were many more things to come. We drove off into an endless desert, stopping to take in the scenery and take pictures at a set of abandoned railroad tracks. In the horizon were snow-capped mountains and volcanoes of both Bolivia and Chile. We stopped again at an area with volcanic rock formations amidst their astounding background. In the distance, we could see smoke emerging from a semi-active volcano. It was near silent out here aside from the sounds of our footsteps on the rocky ground and the constant clicks of our cameras.
Next came a series of lakes, each appearing after we rounded another bend. They smelled of sulfur, which must have been rundown from nearby volcanoes. Many of the lakes were surrounded in white material, which Faustino told us was calcium carbonate. There were occasionally tiny settlements near the mountains where people used to collect sulfur, but the price is almost nothing now so they have abandoned the practice, leaving one person there as a caretaker of the equipment and facilities. The most fascinating and unique lake was Laguna Colorado. The waters are red from the presence of red algae and other bioorganisms. During the wet season, thousands of flamingos inhabit the lake, but migrate during the summer to Chile or to the more tropical regions around Cochabamba within Bolivia. The older flamingos, however, stay year round, as it is too much for them to migrate. The lake is filled with toxic chemicals including sulfur and arsenic from the surrounding mountains, but the flamingos are able to use their breaks in a manner to filter out the toxins and only take in the delicious algae, thus maintaining their bright colors. So we saw a good number of flamingos but could only imagine what it looks like flooded with flamingos in January and February. In contrast with the strange red water of the lake were yellow banks, brown hills, and distant snow-capped mountains. Fluffy clouds scattered the sky throughout the day and were a really nice addition to the scenery. They would race through the bright blue sky, changing shape, as their corresponding shadows sped alongside the mountains. As we drove through the changing landscapes, we could sometimes see the huge dust clouds created by nearby jeeps as well as our own, and sometimes we were the only car, nothing in the distance but vast desert, the only sign of life being old tire tracks. At the highest points in these open deserts live only vicunas (part of the llama family, but so petite and graceful that I at first thought they were antelope), a chinchilla-like creature, and flamingos. Further down in the altiplano there are llamas, sheep, and other animals that you would expect to see, but it was fairly desolate at 4000m plus.
We also went to the Pierdra de Arbol, a formation of volcanic rocks where the most famous rock resembles a tree. The tree was impressive, but more so was the collection of volcanic rocks that surrounded it. It was late in the afternoon and the wind was insane, sand blowing everything, so it was quite the environment. I of course climbed to the top of one of the rocks and stood at the top, but was practically tipped over by the wind and had to use all my strength to maintain standing. My eyes were streaming in tears from the bitter cold wind, and I had to hold tightly to my hat and scarf, which the wind constantly tried to snatch away. A nose muff would have been perfect, but I unfortunately didn’t have any clown noses in the car. We eventually climbed back into the warm jeep, frozen but exhilarated. This set of volcanic rocks is very weak and brittle. In the early morning, the rocks are very cold, but heat up and become malleable midday. With the strong winds of the early evenings, bits and pieces of the rocks are constantly eroded away, so this landscape will eventually disappear bit by bit.
We hid inside at our next hostel, seeking shelter from the cold strong winds and swirls of dust. After our tea and cookies, we played cards until dinner, which was pretty basic spaghetti but finished with a good bottle of wine from Tarija in place of dessert. My zipper luck continues and just as I was about to go to bed, the zipper that had been fixed on my big pack broke again and I was unable to get it back on the track. So back to safety pins and a buckle it was, and at this point I’m just going to leave it be since I won’t be moving around very much anymore and this is becoming too much of a pain.
All night long, there was pattering on the metal roof. We were supposed to get up at 5:30 to begin our journey and eat breakfast later on, but we got knocks on our doors at 5:20 saying that it was snowing and way too windy and dark to go out yet, so we would eat breakfast at the hostel at 6. It was a little lighter by the time we left, but there was still a constant swirl of white and it was hard to see more than a few feet in front of the car, let alone which direction the road even curved. Luckily our guide was a very good driver, though scared us quite a few times as he drove quickly through the white abyss. We were going to visit the geysers, but as we passed the turnoff at 4900m, it was clear that there was no way we would be able to see anything, so we had to skip that bit. We continued on to a lake with hot springs. The strong winds and intense snow had stopped, but it was still cold to go into the bath knowing that we would have to get out of it again – some other groups did, but none of us went for it. This was my first ever snowstorm, so although I was disappointed to miss the geysers and hot springs, it was definitely an adventure clinging to the seats as we hoped that Faustino knew what he was doing. Standing outside, I was really excited by the snowflakes that fell on me – I don’t think I’ve been in anything more than a snow flurry where the flakes disappear right away, but these stayed on my clothes, shaped in perfect geometrical patterns as if cut out from paper and shrunk down.
There had been uncertainty about whether we would be able to drop off people in Chile or not, if the border would be open given the weather, but we eventually sent Jung, who was going to Chile, with another group and took an Australia from that jeep back to Uyuni with us. The third day was the least exciting of the three, and I wish they had spread out the main sites better, or saved the Salar for the last day, which can only be done if no one in the group needs to be dropped off at the Chilean border. We spent most of the day just driving, which was gorgeous but got more tiring than the other days because there were less things to see that were unique and completely breathtaking. We had been near 5000 meters and watched the landscape change drastically as we moved away from the high lakes and vast deserts with scarce greenish shrubbery. In the altiplano, the fields got greener and more towns appeared, most of them based in quinoa harvest, though the fields are currently empty due to the season. We stopped on the way at a few more sights, my favorite being another huge formation of volcanic rocks onto which I climbed way up, finding shelter from the wind between two nearby layers.
I had much more to write during the trip but nothing else is coming out right now, though I guess this is quite long as it is. Back in Uyuni, I got dinner with the guys and then Oliver and I began our journey to Tupiza. We had bought our bus ticket earlier but once we got to the station, we were told that we were moved to another company because their bus wasn’t running that night. After a complicated mess of things, I went back to the ticket lady to sort something our, leaving all of my bags on the sidewalk with Oliver. Suddenly saw the bus drive away and even though it was way before it was time for the bus to leave, this scared me quite a bit and I ran after it until I saw Oliver giving a thumbs up through the window. The bus was just making a u-turn and going to a different spot. Definitely not a fun experience, especially with having to break into a sudden sprint at that altitude! The bus ride was uncomfortable and shaky because the road was so awful. They squeezed people into the aisles. At least I had a seat, but it got partially taken over at times. There was a young woman with her baby sitting in the aisle next to me, and her husband sat in front of her on some sack (which is very rare to see a guy traveling with or even helping a young mother). The baby was adorable, hardly crying, just looking around with a constant giddy look on her face, her mouth open in joy over every little thing. I fell asleep on and off, and woke up once to find the dad had wedged his feet into what little room my feet weren’t using in front of me, and the mom was sitting on my armrest and taking up a good amount of my chair with her back. Squished! We eventually got to Tupiza at 4am and decided to get a hostel for a few hours to get a little bit of sleep. Tupiza details later, it’s late enough now to go find a place in Tarija.
Oh, at some point during this whole adventure, I lost my voice, and it´s still gone. Not good..
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Potosi, The Silver City
Another belated post
6/14/11 9pm
Started off this morning with my usual disoriented wandering that I do in a new town, trying to figure out what direction is what. I wanted to go for breakfast at a vegetarian place that’s supposed to have really good food – I finally found it, but it was closed. So my wandering continued and I eventually ended up getting a basic breakfast at a café, but couldn’t eat my scrambled eggs because they were filled with ham, which they don’t usually do here. Tried to find one agency that was supposed to be very eco-friendly in their mine tours, but it wasn’t where my book said it was (though several hours too late, I passed by it on another street), so I booked with another agency for an afternoon tour.
I spent the morning at Casa de Moneda, an old national mint and the famous museum of Potosi. Took an English tour, though should have taken the advice of my book and just gone with a Spanish tour because although the guide spoke English well, she didn’t say much at all and the Spanish tour seemed much more comprehensive. A tour is mandatory for seeing the museum, which meant that we were rushed from room to room and I didn’t get to stay as long as I would have liked at some of the exhibits, but still saw some really cool things. The first couple rooms were religious art, the only one of which interested me was a painting of the story about Potosi. It featured Cerro Rico, one of the big mountains full of mines, and was filled with all of the different important figures, from Holy Trinity to the sun, moon, and earth to the religious and political figures of the area throughout history. There was an image in the mountain of a farmer with his llamas who as the legend goes, camped on the mountain one night and lit a fire that resulted in small explosions which occurred because the mountain was rich in silver and minerals. He described the explosions with the sound ‘poto poto’ and combined with a Quechua phrase, the name of the city of Potosi came about.
My favorite part of the museum were the exhibits on the mint. The mint is the biggest colonial building in Potosi with five courtyards and over a hundred rooms, many of which remain the same as they did several hundred years ago with their slick but uneven stone floors and brick walls. Throughout the 1800s and halfway through the 20th century, silver coins were made at the mint. Ironically since 1951, no money at all is made in Bolivia – it is more cost effective to make the coins in Chile and Canada and the paper money in France. But way back when, they started out by purifying the silver in furnaces heated to over 900 degrees – slaves were given this job due to the difficulty and hazards. The hot silver was poured into molds to make 15 mm thick sheets of metal. The metal was then pressed through twelve times through a pretty intricate apparatus until it was 1 mm thick. Mules walked in circles for hours on end, spinning a wheel above them, which in turn spun another large wheel and another, creating enough force to flatten the metal piece that a worker placed through. The mules were downstairs, four to a circle, and the giant machines were on the floor above. There were three of the four-sided machines, all sent over from Spain and made of metal and strong oak, which still is well maintained today in the chilly dry climate of Potosi. After being pressed, the sheets of silver were cut into circles and two dies (negatives) were used to engrave both sides of the coin – it was a very labor intensive process with the force supplied by people slamming heavy hammers onto that surrounded the silver pieces. Prior to getting the fancy machinery from Spain, coins were all made entirely by hand and thus were not standardized at all. People would shave off and keep the edges of the coins for the silver, and thus the coins got smaller and smaller with time until the new system was put in place. Later, they moved away from mule power to using steam-powered machinery, which they got from Pennsylvania, and later on, to electric machinery from New Jersey. The Bolivian currency changed four times over the last two centuries due to the changing value of silver and moving from being a colony of Spain to its own Republic. It started out as Suenos, then became Bolivianos, then pesos until the 80s (though many people still refer to costs in pesos), and then back to Bolivianos, though in different sized coins and bills than before. There was a room full of cases of all these coins with the different engravings used over time based on the political status of Bolivia.
There was also a room with over 3000 different minerals, most from Bolivia but some from around the world. It was freezing inside so none of us could bear to stay for long, but there were tons of really gorgeous and interesting minerals throughout. We passed through another room with items made of silver, from spoons to religious décor to plates, bowls, and huge intricate jars and vases. There was a gallery of archaeology filled with bones and skulls, part of the skeletons of a whale and an armadillo (don’t know how those fit in with anything), mummies, and ceramics. And quite a bit more too, it was lots to take in.
After I walked out of the freezing museum and into the sunlight, it was time to hunt for a new camera. Eventually found a store selling a few and settled on a Fuji (the only option was in pink!). It’s a pretty good camera but I was really not planning on spending this much money or having to buy a new camera while I was here. But no way am I going the next month and a half without a camera with so much still to see!
After lots of scurrying around town to get the battery charged and go get my memory card from my broken camera, I headed over to the Real Deal for the mine tour. At first, it was just me, Jake from Norway, and Maytal from Israel. We were driven over to the warehouse and got decked out in miners gear with rubber boots, pants and a jacket to put over our clothes, and a helmet with a light that was connected to a waist belt. We looked quite ridiculous as we walked through the miners market and bought some gifts to bring to the miners (coca leaves, water, and juice). We then had to hang around for a while and wait because four others were coming to join the group. Once they eventually arrived (a couple from Poland and another from Brazil), we piled back into the van and drove partway up Cerro Rico to the Rosario cooperative mines. We were at 4300 meters, but luckily the altitude didn’t get to me too badly.
From what I had read and heard, I expected the mines to be an eye-opening but horrendous experience, definitely worth doing once but never repeating. They were actually much less strenuous and intense than I had expected. As we walked and ducked through the tunnels and climbed a bit, there were definitely some hot and cold points as well as some overwhelming smells and tons of dust in the air, but I had imagined much worse. Though we spent under two hours in the mines and miners typically spend six to twenty hours there at one time, so that definitely puts it in a different perspective. They eat before they go in and after they go out, but besides that, their only sustenance is the coca leaves that they constantly hold in a wad in their cheeks. They seem to sometimes bring in a bottle of water, but that’s not nearly enough for a day’s work given the dust that surrounds them as they do their strenuous work. Oh, and they also drink straight from delicious smelling bottles of 96% alcohol, always spilling a few drops on the ground as an offering to the Pachamama before they take a drink. Tour groups come through frequently and it’s become very customary to bring gifts for the miners, which they both expect and appreciate. We talked for a while with several groups of miners, who were all very friendly and cracking jokes as they took pictures with us and answered questions about life in the mines. Our guide Reynaldo was awesome and told us a lot about the way that the mines work. His English was really good (I definitely felt very much a tourist today doing so much in English rather than Spanish) and he explained things well, though there were a few points where we had a hard time getting the answer to a question we had.
As we walked through the mines, we followed along the rail path that was used to wheel around wagons and bags of mineral chunks. At many points, we had to crouch down to avoid hitting our heads on the low ceiling or swerve around and duck under the pipes that held compressed air to work the machinery. The path was sometimes dry and sometimes a muddy river that we sloshed on through, very grateful for our boots. Some of us had bought surgical masks to cover our noses and mouths and we alternated using them to hide from the dust and chemical smell and not using them to be able to breathe more easily as we walked quickly along. (Bolivians seem to like to walk very, very quickly on tours even when asked to slow down - but on the sidewalks, they stroll along very, very slowly and casually in large groups so that I often just walk a bit in the street to pass them because I’m not used to walking at that pace to get somewhere.) We didn’t see the drillers, which seems to be the most intense and hazardous job in the mines, but we passed by several groups wheeling out their wagons or taking a rest. There was one open space where a group of men worked shoveling their mineral chunks into rubber buckets which they then attached to ropes and pulled to another level using machinery. This was the one place in the mines where a light bulb hung from a corner, but everywhere else, navigation was done entirely with headlamps. Several of the guys in my group shoveled for a bit and with all the swirling dust, strong smell of chemicals, lack of fresh air or sunlight, and heavy labor, it looked like quite the intense job, hard to imagine the miners doing all day, every day. Definitely needed our masks at that point, but the workers wear no face protection and were hacking away – by the end of their careers, they usually have black lungs and are coughing up blood. At one point during our tour, we left the open tunnel and climbed a windy passage and then down a ladder with the support of a rope. From this area, we pointed our lights to see further down still where another long rope led deeper into the mountain where we could hear drillers working, as well as another ladder up to a different drilling site.
The mine we were at was a cooperative mine where there are many different groups of miners who have their own equipment and their own areas and types of work. They set their own hours and divide their earnings amongst themselves. It seems like a pretty complicated system with paying taxes to the government in order to get a pension later and there being miners of many different levels, none of us fully understood what Reynaldo told us about it. But it’s a socialist system and some of the miners are able to make huge amounts of money if they have a good find, whereas others work ridiculously long hours and don’t make much at all. It all depends on the quality and quantity of the minerals they find. Most of the silver has been depleted from the mountain, but there is still some buried within, as well as many different minerals. The miners each have different roles, from shoveling to pushing wagons to setting dynamic to drilling – the drillers are by far the worst off and get too sick to work after about ten years of drilling. The pension system is pretty complicated and they have to work for quite a while to get any sort of benefit; Reynaldo just kept going on tangents when we tried to get him to clarify that for us.
After the miners take all of their findings out of the mines, they sell them to the processing plant based on the quality and type of metal – three samples are taken for testing to confirm how much the miners get paid. The processing plant was a dusty loud whirl of machines and chemicals. First was the room where various chemicals were mixed with wooden wheels and slowly dripped down into white pipes that went to the floor below. Downstairs the stones were ground up, mixed with chemicals, and the garbage material was sifted out based on weight through a series of rustic apparatuses. The final product was laid out to dry, but it was still not pure metal. They don’t have the capability to separate out the pure products efficiently in Bolivia, so the processed dry material is sent to Chile and then sent by boat to Europe (it can’t be sent directly since Bolivia is landlocked). Quite the bad situation for Bolivia because they have to then buy silver from Europe at a much higher price!
Each mine has several figures of Tio ----, the owner of the stones and minerals within the earth. The workers give offerings of drinks, coca leaves, and decorations to this figure with horns in exchange for protection while working underground. The miners rely on both this figure and the Pachamama to look after them. Four times a year (the first three Saturdays in June and one in August – I purposefully avoided being here on a Saturday), there is a huge ceremony where white llamas are sacrificed for the workers’ protection. They give offerings of llama blood to their protectors in order to feed them the nourishment they need and spill animal blood so that less human blood will need to be shed. The llamas are very expensive, but a certain number of them need to be sacrificed based on the number of workers at the mines. This was just done a few days ago, so the walls on the outside of the mines and the blue doors outside the washrooms are all streaked with fresh llama blood that was tossed and spilled in offering during last weekend’s festivities.
After leaving the mine and processing plant, we bundled back into the car, freezing cold with the night air of Potosi, though it was nothing compared to what I will experience in Uyuni. Dinner was included in our tour, so we went to The Meal Deal, a restaurant run by the wives of the ex-miners who own The Real Deal. The kids of the families were hanging around the restaurant and one of the mothers carried her large three year old daughter in a blanket bundle on her back until she fell asleep, quite a task given that she was standing up straight and working this entire time. The two couples went elsewhere for dinner for some reason, but I ate with Jake and Maytal, though Jake left early to go catch a night bus to Uyuni. We had crepes with cheese, quinoa soup, fried eggplant with French fries and veggies, and hot chocolate. Very good, but always disappointing when they are out of something on the menu that you’ve been waiting for through the whole meal – flan! Made my way back to the hostel without getting lost and bundled up in my thankfully very warm blankets in the freezing cold room. Next stop, Uyuni.
6/14/11 9pm
Started off this morning with my usual disoriented wandering that I do in a new town, trying to figure out what direction is what. I wanted to go for breakfast at a vegetarian place that’s supposed to have really good food – I finally found it, but it was closed. So my wandering continued and I eventually ended up getting a basic breakfast at a café, but couldn’t eat my scrambled eggs because they were filled with ham, which they don’t usually do here. Tried to find one agency that was supposed to be very eco-friendly in their mine tours, but it wasn’t where my book said it was (though several hours too late, I passed by it on another street), so I booked with another agency for an afternoon tour.
I spent the morning at Casa de Moneda, an old national mint and the famous museum of Potosi. Took an English tour, though should have taken the advice of my book and just gone with a Spanish tour because although the guide spoke English well, she didn’t say much at all and the Spanish tour seemed much more comprehensive. A tour is mandatory for seeing the museum, which meant that we were rushed from room to room and I didn’t get to stay as long as I would have liked at some of the exhibits, but still saw some really cool things. The first couple rooms were religious art, the only one of which interested me was a painting of the story about Potosi. It featured Cerro Rico, one of the big mountains full of mines, and was filled with all of the different important figures, from Holy Trinity to the sun, moon, and earth to the religious and political figures of the area throughout history. There was an image in the mountain of a farmer with his llamas who as the legend goes, camped on the mountain one night and lit a fire that resulted in small explosions which occurred because the mountain was rich in silver and minerals. He described the explosions with the sound ‘poto poto’ and combined with a Quechua phrase, the name of the city of Potosi came about.
My favorite part of the museum were the exhibits on the mint. The mint is the biggest colonial building in Potosi with five courtyards and over a hundred rooms, many of which remain the same as they did several hundred years ago with their slick but uneven stone floors and brick walls. Throughout the 1800s and halfway through the 20th century, silver coins were made at the mint. Ironically since 1951, no money at all is made in Bolivia – it is more cost effective to make the coins in Chile and Canada and the paper money in France. But way back when, they started out by purifying the silver in furnaces heated to over 900 degrees – slaves were given this job due to the difficulty and hazards. The hot silver was poured into molds to make 15 mm thick sheets of metal. The metal was then pressed through twelve times through a pretty intricate apparatus until it was 1 mm thick. Mules walked in circles for hours on end, spinning a wheel above them, which in turn spun another large wheel and another, creating enough force to flatten the metal piece that a worker placed through. The mules were downstairs, four to a circle, and the giant machines were on the floor above. There were three of the four-sided machines, all sent over from Spain and made of metal and strong oak, which still is well maintained today in the chilly dry climate of Potosi. After being pressed, the sheets of silver were cut into circles and two dies (negatives) were used to engrave both sides of the coin – it was a very labor intensive process with the force supplied by people slamming heavy hammers onto that surrounded the silver pieces. Prior to getting the fancy machinery from Spain, coins were all made entirely by hand and thus were not standardized at all. People would shave off and keep the edges of the coins for the silver, and thus the coins got smaller and smaller with time until the new system was put in place. Later, they moved away from mule power to using steam-powered machinery, which they got from Pennsylvania, and later on, to electric machinery from New Jersey. The Bolivian currency changed four times over the last two centuries due to the changing value of silver and moving from being a colony of Spain to its own Republic. It started out as Suenos, then became Bolivianos, then pesos until the 80s (though many people still refer to costs in pesos), and then back to Bolivianos, though in different sized coins and bills than before. There was a room full of cases of all these coins with the different engravings used over time based on the political status of Bolivia.
There was also a room with over 3000 different minerals, most from Bolivia but some from around the world. It was freezing inside so none of us could bear to stay for long, but there were tons of really gorgeous and interesting minerals throughout. We passed through another room with items made of silver, from spoons to religious décor to plates, bowls, and huge intricate jars and vases. There was a gallery of archaeology filled with bones and skulls, part of the skeletons of a whale and an armadillo (don’t know how those fit in with anything), mummies, and ceramics. And quite a bit more too, it was lots to take in.
After I walked out of the freezing museum and into the sunlight, it was time to hunt for a new camera. Eventually found a store selling a few and settled on a Fuji (the only option was in pink!). It’s a pretty good camera but I was really not planning on spending this much money or having to buy a new camera while I was here. But no way am I going the next month and a half without a camera with so much still to see!
After lots of scurrying around town to get the battery charged and go get my memory card from my broken camera, I headed over to the Real Deal for the mine tour. At first, it was just me, Jake from Norway, and Maytal from Israel. We were driven over to the warehouse and got decked out in miners gear with rubber boots, pants and a jacket to put over our clothes, and a helmet with a light that was connected to a waist belt. We looked quite ridiculous as we walked through the miners market and bought some gifts to bring to the miners (coca leaves, water, and juice). We then had to hang around for a while and wait because four others were coming to join the group. Once they eventually arrived (a couple from Poland and another from Brazil), we piled back into the van and drove partway up Cerro Rico to the Rosario cooperative mines. We were at 4300 meters, but luckily the altitude didn’t get to me too badly.
From what I had read and heard, I expected the mines to be an eye-opening but horrendous experience, definitely worth doing once but never repeating. They were actually much less strenuous and intense than I had expected. As we walked and ducked through the tunnels and climbed a bit, there were definitely some hot and cold points as well as some overwhelming smells and tons of dust in the air, but I had imagined much worse. Though we spent under two hours in the mines and miners typically spend six to twenty hours there at one time, so that definitely puts it in a different perspective. They eat before they go in and after they go out, but besides that, their only sustenance is the coca leaves that they constantly hold in a wad in their cheeks. They seem to sometimes bring in a bottle of water, but that’s not nearly enough for a day’s work given the dust that surrounds them as they do their strenuous work. Oh, and they also drink straight from delicious smelling bottles of 96% alcohol, always spilling a few drops on the ground as an offering to the Pachamama before they take a drink. Tour groups come through frequently and it’s become very customary to bring gifts for the miners, which they both expect and appreciate. We talked for a while with several groups of miners, who were all very friendly and cracking jokes as they took pictures with us and answered questions about life in the mines. Our guide Reynaldo was awesome and told us a lot about the way that the mines work. His English was really good (I definitely felt very much a tourist today doing so much in English rather than Spanish) and he explained things well, though there were a few points where we had a hard time getting the answer to a question we had.
As we walked through the mines, we followed along the rail path that was used to wheel around wagons and bags of mineral chunks. At many points, we had to crouch down to avoid hitting our heads on the low ceiling or swerve around and duck under the pipes that held compressed air to work the machinery. The path was sometimes dry and sometimes a muddy river that we sloshed on through, very grateful for our boots. Some of us had bought surgical masks to cover our noses and mouths and we alternated using them to hide from the dust and chemical smell and not using them to be able to breathe more easily as we walked quickly along. (Bolivians seem to like to walk very, very quickly on tours even when asked to slow down - but on the sidewalks, they stroll along very, very slowly and casually in large groups so that I often just walk a bit in the street to pass them because I’m not used to walking at that pace to get somewhere.) We didn’t see the drillers, which seems to be the most intense and hazardous job in the mines, but we passed by several groups wheeling out their wagons or taking a rest. There was one open space where a group of men worked shoveling their mineral chunks into rubber buckets which they then attached to ropes and pulled to another level using machinery. This was the one place in the mines where a light bulb hung from a corner, but everywhere else, navigation was done entirely with headlamps. Several of the guys in my group shoveled for a bit and with all the swirling dust, strong smell of chemicals, lack of fresh air or sunlight, and heavy labor, it looked like quite the intense job, hard to imagine the miners doing all day, every day. Definitely needed our masks at that point, but the workers wear no face protection and were hacking away – by the end of their careers, they usually have black lungs and are coughing up blood. At one point during our tour, we left the open tunnel and climbed a windy passage and then down a ladder with the support of a rope. From this area, we pointed our lights to see further down still where another long rope led deeper into the mountain where we could hear drillers working, as well as another ladder up to a different drilling site.
The mine we were at was a cooperative mine where there are many different groups of miners who have their own equipment and their own areas and types of work. They set their own hours and divide their earnings amongst themselves. It seems like a pretty complicated system with paying taxes to the government in order to get a pension later and there being miners of many different levels, none of us fully understood what Reynaldo told us about it. But it’s a socialist system and some of the miners are able to make huge amounts of money if they have a good find, whereas others work ridiculously long hours and don’t make much at all. It all depends on the quality and quantity of the minerals they find. Most of the silver has been depleted from the mountain, but there is still some buried within, as well as many different minerals. The miners each have different roles, from shoveling to pushing wagons to setting dynamic to drilling – the drillers are by far the worst off and get too sick to work after about ten years of drilling. The pension system is pretty complicated and they have to work for quite a while to get any sort of benefit; Reynaldo just kept going on tangents when we tried to get him to clarify that for us.
After the miners take all of their findings out of the mines, they sell them to the processing plant based on the quality and type of metal – three samples are taken for testing to confirm how much the miners get paid. The processing plant was a dusty loud whirl of machines and chemicals. First was the room where various chemicals were mixed with wooden wheels and slowly dripped down into white pipes that went to the floor below. Downstairs the stones were ground up, mixed with chemicals, and the garbage material was sifted out based on weight through a series of rustic apparatuses. The final product was laid out to dry, but it was still not pure metal. They don’t have the capability to separate out the pure products efficiently in Bolivia, so the processed dry material is sent to Chile and then sent by boat to Europe (it can’t be sent directly since Bolivia is landlocked). Quite the bad situation for Bolivia because they have to then buy silver from Europe at a much higher price!
Each mine has several figures of Tio ----, the owner of the stones and minerals within the earth. The workers give offerings of drinks, coca leaves, and decorations to this figure with horns in exchange for protection while working underground. The miners rely on both this figure and the Pachamama to look after them. Four times a year (the first three Saturdays in June and one in August – I purposefully avoided being here on a Saturday), there is a huge ceremony where white llamas are sacrificed for the workers’ protection. They give offerings of llama blood to their protectors in order to feed them the nourishment they need and spill animal blood so that less human blood will need to be shed. The llamas are very expensive, but a certain number of them need to be sacrificed based on the number of workers at the mines. This was just done a few days ago, so the walls on the outside of the mines and the blue doors outside the washrooms are all streaked with fresh llama blood that was tossed and spilled in offering during last weekend’s festivities.
After leaving the mine and processing plant, we bundled back into the car, freezing cold with the night air of Potosi, though it was nothing compared to what I will experience in Uyuni. Dinner was included in our tour, so we went to The Meal Deal, a restaurant run by the wives of the ex-miners who own The Real Deal. The kids of the families were hanging around the restaurant and one of the mothers carried her large three year old daughter in a blanket bundle on her back until she fell asleep, quite a task given that she was standing up straight and working this entire time. The two couples went elsewhere for dinner for some reason, but I ate with Jake and Maytal, though Jake left early to go catch a night bus to Uyuni. We had crepes with cheese, quinoa soup, fried eggplant with French fries and veggies, and hot chocolate. Very good, but always disappointing when they are out of something on the menu that you’ve been waiting for through the whole meal – flan! Made my way back to the hostel without getting lost and bundled up in my thankfully very warm blankets in the freezing cold room. Next stop, Uyuni.
Ciao, Sucre – Quite The Departure
Very belated posting because Uyuni didn{t have a USB port on the computer and then I was out in the middle of nowhere for a few days. Lots of writing to catch up on!
6/15/11 11am
I’m writing this several days late, things have been pretty busy all the time. I’m on the bus right now heading to Uyuni, but I want to do a little wrap up on my time in Sucre. First off, my last couple hours there were completely insane. On Monday afternoon, I continued my quest to find out about when the buses would be running again and when I was told that there was one leaving that night, I decided to go for it and buy the ticket in case the blockade started up again in the morning. This was a bit after 4pm and I was supposed to be at the terminal at 5:30 for a 6pm departure. Scurried around town, going to Fox to pay and say goodbye and going to the Kodak store to pick up my camera. Well, what was I told – they weren’t able to fix it, but they didn’t have it yet, it would be there at five. They said that people might be able to fix it in La Paz but they couldn’t do anything about it there. Would have been nice if they at least had it ready for me since they couldn’t do anything for it! They said it would be there by 5 and I told them I would come by then and needed it then since I would be on my way to the bus terminal and leaving Sucre, and they assured me that was fine. Decided I had no choice but to buy another camera and deal with the Canon once I’m back in the US, but there was no time to do that then. I practically ran home and packed all my stuff and then took a taxi, intending to just stop for a minute by the store to get my unfixed camera and then continue on to the bus terminal. With all the evening traffic, got to the store at around 5:30 and the camera still wasn’t there! I took all my stuff out of the taxi and waited in the store for another ten minutes while they called the guy who had the camera to come. Eventually got the camera and grabbed another taxi to go to the terminal, which was hard to get because most of them refused to go that direction because there were still blockades.
Got to the area of the terminal around 5:45 and the terminal was still shut down, as I had been told it would be, but my bus was nowhere to be seen on the street outside the terminal where it was supposed to be. I asked some people but no one knew what was going on; they were all just hanging around, having no idea when any buses would leave but completely used to that situation. A bit after six, I called the agency that I had gotten the ticket from to find out what was going on, and they called the bus company and told me that the bus was still making its way up to the terminal area but would be there soon. The blockade was supposed to end at six, but even at 6:30, the buses were all still diagonal and sideways blocking the road and I was afraid that maybe my bus was somewhere but I just couldn’t find it. This whole time, I was lugging around my bags and asking a ton of people but couldn’t find anyone else who was on my bus. Eventually, the correct bus pulled onto the still blocked road and parked. A crowd of people surrounded it, but the driver got out and walked away. I asked someone and he said we might have to wait another hour or two. That would not have been fun while carrying my bag, especially with no nearby cafes and restaurants to sit down while still keeping an eye on the bus. I stood with the crowd for a bit and then ended up being told to follow this girl who seemed to be the secretary for the bus. She walked really quickly down several blocks and around a few corners and I had no idea where we were going or what we were doing, but I just followed the girl with the yellow sweater along with some others. We arrived at the bus, which must have driven around a different way to move away from the blockade. There was a huge crowd of people, way more than the bus would allow, and those of us with tickets shoved aboard. Once we were all in our seats, there were a lot more people still wanting to get on, but they didn’t let them, for once not filling the aisles with people. It was over an hour late, but we finally were off for the three hour journey to Potosi. Buses here are always an adventure!
My three weeks in Sucre were the first time that I really stayed in and got to know a foreign city. I spent three weeks in Huancayo, Peru, but was based primarily at my homestay and the vet clinic and all I really knew of the city was how to get to the supermarket. I had my home base and various daily activities in Sucre, but I got into a system where I felt much less like a tourist, much more at home. I recognized the cashiers at the supermarket, I bought my warm fresh bread from the same woman every couple days, I knew where to find everything I needed at the bustling open central market, I had my favorite cheap but fast internet cafe, I easily knew my way around all the main parts of the city. I wasn’t constantly trying to get my bearings and figure out what was going on – I had my places to go during the day, and the mid-afternoons first at the vet and then free to wander, eat ice cream, and people watch, completely comfortable in my familiar surroundings. Sucre was very safe and I had no qualms about the 15 minute walk home late at night, knowing which routes to take to avoid the steeper hills. I still stood out as a foreigner, but was no longer stopping at corners to look at my map. I was the only foreigner who frequented Freya’s for lunch and got used to the unspoken system of the lunch routine there. I took public transportation rather than taxis and fell into my place within the community.
From talking with the many other travelers in Sucre, I wished at times that I was in an actual homestay. They had called it a homestay and yes, we shared a house with the family, but had completely separate quarters and only saw each other in passing. It would have been a really good experience to actually live with the family, to eat with them (though being vegetarian would make that difficult), to talk with them and see the city with them, to be more immersed in the culture. But I had lunch with Isabel every weekday and got a sense of what university life was like for her, as well as growing up with a large family in the south of Bolivia. I had my kids in the morning and students in the evening, so I still spent a good bit of time getting to know people as they went about their daily routines. So a homestay would have been nice, but I did have complete independence to go around as I pleased and plan my own activities as I experienced living within the community and sharing stories with other travelers from around the world.
I’m going to miss my kids and I really wish I had more pictures to better remember them. As young as they are, it’s fun to predict what they will be like as they get older. Maria-Elba, one of the older girls and the daughter of one of the teachers, is incredibly smart and creative, but is really spoiled and entitled so will probably turn into quite the bossy one, though still with a good heart. Luis, who always used water to style his hair in the mirror before lunch, is definitely going to be pretty good looking when he grows up. He was sometimes a rascal but he knew when too much was too much and stopped with a charming little smile when I asked him to. Miguel, always with a snot-streaked face, was very violent and would beat others up over tiny little things, and he absolutely would not respond to any sort of direction; I’m hoping he changes his ways! Bianca was a complete sweetie, but also quite the tattletale and would get really upset if anyone did anything else wrong; she will be a the teacher’s pet. Alina was a very pretty girl, fairly shy and a follower, and was not very motivated to learn because she was such a perfectionist so she could never get it right. She sometimes needed to write out a page of letters for kindergarten in the afternoons and she would refuse to do it, so one of the teachers would do it for her, simply saying that Alina didn’t want to and someone had to do it. Hopefully she will be able to start doing her own work soon, I got her fairly confident in writing out her name and tried to get her not to worry that every letter was not exactly perfect. My favorite of the babies was Cati, Maria-Elba’s little sister. Every day, she would ask me what my name was and repeat it over and over again until the other little ones around her started chanting it as well. She was a huge lovebug but also very stubborn, needing to have things her way. She wanted to hang out with the other kids since her sister was there, but she was actually really mature for her age and did well with them when we allowed it. I loved little Pedro’s huge eyes, and the patience of three year old Ayalin who set to comforting Aileen, the new baby who was having a hard time adjusting. I always love kids in other countries because tend to be less spoiled and bratty, less focused on wanting this toy, needing that, it’s more about making do with what they have, playing outside, turning anything into a toy. Though where I was, some discipline would have helped, especially for a bunch of those boys!
Sucre is an eclectic mix of traditional and modern, rich and poor. Most women carried their babies wrapped in colorful blankets and slung across their bags, but there was the occasional toddler rolled around in a stroller. On the micros every day, there were students heading to school, dressed either in their solid colored uniforms for private schools or with their long white coat over other clothes for public schools. Kids wearing makeup and carrying purses or cell phones sat alongside other children with dirt-covered skin and tattered clothing and shoes that were far too big or small. Next to business women with their fancy suits, heels, and purses, there were traditionally dressed women with their hats, ruffled skirts, shawls, and long braided hair fastened at the bottom by intricate ties of big black beads with braided yard. The braids were held against the women’s backs by a part of their vests – a strip of fabric along their up back into which they tucked their hair. These women, of much lower socioeconomic class, carried large bags filled with the items they would sell during the day, and many spoke primarily Quechua rather than Spanish. In the US, the socioeconomic gaps between people are less visible simply in passing, especially in the middle class society that we live in. But in Sucre, the differences were constantly evident yet fit together perfectly to form a complete society with strong components of both past and present, a place where everyone fit in their own place and didn’t constantly need more.
6/15/11 11am
I’m writing this several days late, things have been pretty busy all the time. I’m on the bus right now heading to Uyuni, but I want to do a little wrap up on my time in Sucre. First off, my last couple hours there were completely insane. On Monday afternoon, I continued my quest to find out about when the buses would be running again and when I was told that there was one leaving that night, I decided to go for it and buy the ticket in case the blockade started up again in the morning. This was a bit after 4pm and I was supposed to be at the terminal at 5:30 for a 6pm departure. Scurried around town, going to Fox to pay and say goodbye and going to the Kodak store to pick up my camera. Well, what was I told – they weren’t able to fix it, but they didn’t have it yet, it would be there at five. They said that people might be able to fix it in La Paz but they couldn’t do anything about it there. Would have been nice if they at least had it ready for me since they couldn’t do anything for it! They said it would be there by 5 and I told them I would come by then and needed it then since I would be on my way to the bus terminal and leaving Sucre, and they assured me that was fine. Decided I had no choice but to buy another camera and deal with the Canon once I’m back in the US, but there was no time to do that then. I practically ran home and packed all my stuff and then took a taxi, intending to just stop for a minute by the store to get my unfixed camera and then continue on to the bus terminal. With all the evening traffic, got to the store at around 5:30 and the camera still wasn’t there! I took all my stuff out of the taxi and waited in the store for another ten minutes while they called the guy who had the camera to come. Eventually got the camera and grabbed another taxi to go to the terminal, which was hard to get because most of them refused to go that direction because there were still blockades.
Got to the area of the terminal around 5:45 and the terminal was still shut down, as I had been told it would be, but my bus was nowhere to be seen on the street outside the terminal where it was supposed to be. I asked some people but no one knew what was going on; they were all just hanging around, having no idea when any buses would leave but completely used to that situation. A bit after six, I called the agency that I had gotten the ticket from to find out what was going on, and they called the bus company and told me that the bus was still making its way up to the terminal area but would be there soon. The blockade was supposed to end at six, but even at 6:30, the buses were all still diagonal and sideways blocking the road and I was afraid that maybe my bus was somewhere but I just couldn’t find it. This whole time, I was lugging around my bags and asking a ton of people but couldn’t find anyone else who was on my bus. Eventually, the correct bus pulled onto the still blocked road and parked. A crowd of people surrounded it, but the driver got out and walked away. I asked someone and he said we might have to wait another hour or two. That would not have been fun while carrying my bag, especially with no nearby cafes and restaurants to sit down while still keeping an eye on the bus. I stood with the crowd for a bit and then ended up being told to follow this girl who seemed to be the secretary for the bus. She walked really quickly down several blocks and around a few corners and I had no idea where we were going or what we were doing, but I just followed the girl with the yellow sweater along with some others. We arrived at the bus, which must have driven around a different way to move away from the blockade. There was a huge crowd of people, way more than the bus would allow, and those of us with tickets shoved aboard. Once we were all in our seats, there were a lot more people still wanting to get on, but they didn’t let them, for once not filling the aisles with people. It was over an hour late, but we finally were off for the three hour journey to Potosi. Buses here are always an adventure!
My three weeks in Sucre were the first time that I really stayed in and got to know a foreign city. I spent three weeks in Huancayo, Peru, but was based primarily at my homestay and the vet clinic and all I really knew of the city was how to get to the supermarket. I had my home base and various daily activities in Sucre, but I got into a system where I felt much less like a tourist, much more at home. I recognized the cashiers at the supermarket, I bought my warm fresh bread from the same woman every couple days, I knew where to find everything I needed at the bustling open central market, I had my favorite cheap but fast internet cafe, I easily knew my way around all the main parts of the city. I wasn’t constantly trying to get my bearings and figure out what was going on – I had my places to go during the day, and the mid-afternoons first at the vet and then free to wander, eat ice cream, and people watch, completely comfortable in my familiar surroundings. Sucre was very safe and I had no qualms about the 15 minute walk home late at night, knowing which routes to take to avoid the steeper hills. I still stood out as a foreigner, but was no longer stopping at corners to look at my map. I was the only foreigner who frequented Freya’s for lunch and got used to the unspoken system of the lunch routine there. I took public transportation rather than taxis and fell into my place within the community.
From talking with the many other travelers in Sucre, I wished at times that I was in an actual homestay. They had called it a homestay and yes, we shared a house with the family, but had completely separate quarters and only saw each other in passing. It would have been a really good experience to actually live with the family, to eat with them (though being vegetarian would make that difficult), to talk with them and see the city with them, to be more immersed in the culture. But I had lunch with Isabel every weekday and got a sense of what university life was like for her, as well as growing up with a large family in the south of Bolivia. I had my kids in the morning and students in the evening, so I still spent a good bit of time getting to know people as they went about their daily routines. So a homestay would have been nice, but I did have complete independence to go around as I pleased and plan my own activities as I experienced living within the community and sharing stories with other travelers from around the world.
I’m going to miss my kids and I really wish I had more pictures to better remember them. As young as they are, it’s fun to predict what they will be like as they get older. Maria-Elba, one of the older girls and the daughter of one of the teachers, is incredibly smart and creative, but is really spoiled and entitled so will probably turn into quite the bossy one, though still with a good heart. Luis, who always used water to style his hair in the mirror before lunch, is definitely going to be pretty good looking when he grows up. He was sometimes a rascal but he knew when too much was too much and stopped with a charming little smile when I asked him to. Miguel, always with a snot-streaked face, was very violent and would beat others up over tiny little things, and he absolutely would not respond to any sort of direction; I’m hoping he changes his ways! Bianca was a complete sweetie, but also quite the tattletale and would get really upset if anyone did anything else wrong; she will be a the teacher’s pet. Alina was a very pretty girl, fairly shy and a follower, and was not very motivated to learn because she was such a perfectionist so she could never get it right. She sometimes needed to write out a page of letters for kindergarten in the afternoons and she would refuse to do it, so one of the teachers would do it for her, simply saying that Alina didn’t want to and someone had to do it. Hopefully she will be able to start doing her own work soon, I got her fairly confident in writing out her name and tried to get her not to worry that every letter was not exactly perfect. My favorite of the babies was Cati, Maria-Elba’s little sister. Every day, she would ask me what my name was and repeat it over and over again until the other little ones around her started chanting it as well. She was a huge lovebug but also very stubborn, needing to have things her way. She wanted to hang out with the other kids since her sister was there, but she was actually really mature for her age and did well with them when we allowed it. I loved little Pedro’s huge eyes, and the patience of three year old Ayalin who set to comforting Aileen, the new baby who was having a hard time adjusting. I always love kids in other countries because tend to be less spoiled and bratty, less focused on wanting this toy, needing that, it’s more about making do with what they have, playing outside, turning anything into a toy. Though where I was, some discipline would have helped, especially for a bunch of those boys!
Sucre is an eclectic mix of traditional and modern, rich and poor. Most women carried their babies wrapped in colorful blankets and slung across their bags, but there was the occasional toddler rolled around in a stroller. On the micros every day, there were students heading to school, dressed either in their solid colored uniforms for private schools or with their long white coat over other clothes for public schools. Kids wearing makeup and carrying purses or cell phones sat alongside other children with dirt-covered skin and tattered clothing and shoes that were far too big or small. Next to business women with their fancy suits, heels, and purses, there were traditionally dressed women with their hats, ruffled skirts, shawls, and long braided hair fastened at the bottom by intricate ties of big black beads with braided yard. The braids were held against the women’s backs by a part of their vests – a strip of fabric along their up back into which they tucked their hair. These women, of much lower socioeconomic class, carried large bags filled with the items they would sell during the day, and many spoke primarily Quechua rather than Spanish. In the US, the socioeconomic gaps between people are less visible simply in passing, especially in the middle class society that we live in. But in Sucre, the differences were constantly evident yet fit together perfectly to form a complete society with strong components of both past and present, a place where everyone fit in their own place and didn’t constantly need more.
Monday, June 13, 2011
I walked as usual into the central area to catch a micro to the guardaria. I knew that the main buses weren´t running through the country, but after buying a cheese empanada and waiting way longer than usual, I realized that the the micros weren´t running either. No one knows much anything about it, but there´s some sort of bus strike in all of Bolivia right now. No worries - not violent at all, just making life complicated for everybody. I ended up taking a taxi up to the guardaria, which took a while because nobody knew where it was and none of the roads nearby have names.
When I finally got there, I just about walked out because it seemed like there was nothing I could do whatsoever. It was late but the kids weren´t split into their age groups yet. Most of the older kids were sitting at the table fairly quietly doing nothing, aside from a few of the trouble makers, and all of the little guys raced around the room, climbed on the chairs and tables, and crawled all over the place. I wanted to start my C lesson with the older kids and tried to get the little ones over into their room, but to no avail. The room was complete chaos with hair pulling, punching and hitting, screaming, and kids on top of all the furniture. The teachers sat in the corner talking amongst themselves and I went up to them and asked if they could help take the little ones into the other room so that I could work with the older ones. I´m fairly certain I said it in clear Spanish and also gestured to the little guys on the table, and they said they would help. But what did they do... they got up and walked outside to consider chatting and laughing. At that point, I almost just gave up and left for the day, but it wasn´t the kids fault at all so I made myself stay. I let a couple of the better behaved little ones stay at the table, and picked up a few of the others and plopped them into a room with toys. Some of the rascal older boys were racing around, but I just tuned them out because there was no way to get all of my kids to sit still with the teachers being oh so helpful. I started with my review of B and went into C, and the kids who were sitting at the table did a good job of paying attention and calling out the names of the images I had printed. Even a little girl who is barely three joined in with the others in calling out the names of things and that they started with C. There continued to be chaos all around us, but the more focused kids are very good at tuning that out. Handed out papers and they all got to work coloring and gluing. The little glue bottles I had bought last week had mostly disappeared already, so I went around with a big tub of paste and put dabs on their papers once they told me what the picture was and what letter it started with. I also had a bunch of face (cara in spanish) stickers and put those on the table, which they loved. The faces were of all different colors and emotions and to my surprise, the kids actually described each of the faces outloud before sticking it on their paper. Randomly in the middle of the activity while the kids at the table were clearly engaged, the teachers came in, made everyone sit down on the floor against the wall, and gave them oranges. Um, ever think to wait for snacktime until they are done with the activity since they are actually focused on something for once instead of running wildly? But luckily, most of the kids liked the project so much that they quickly finished their oranges and came back to take their places. I got them all to write their names on their papers, or at least trace over the letters that I wrote - we´ve been doing that at the end of each day´s project and some of them seem to be getting better at that. The teachers continued to be of absolutely no use - I looked in on the room of one and two year olds and they were just playing by themselves, no teacher in sight. The room was open to the main area I was in with the older kids, but still, quite unbelievable. There was such constant noise that I ignored most of it, but occasionally went over to break up one fight or another. I got the girls to help me clean up the project and put away the chairs and tables, and the older boys went off into the room usually meant for the three to four year olds and actually sat calmly to do puzzles, very odd. Since Nicky was sick, I was the only volunteer there and there was no way I was taking my usual group of crazies outside, so I took just five girls with me who happened to be nearby - three of my older girls and two younger ones. Gave them my usual lecture that they needed to listen while we were outside, and they did a good job actually holding hands and singing a song the entire time we walked over to the yard. After we were outside for a bit, another girl and boy from the oldest group came out - I was not excited to see Miguel outside because he was the most troublesome last week. But being outside with just girls seemed to keep away his rascalness and everyone behaved. Getting them to go back inside was the usual ordeal with most of them thinking it was funny to run away rather than get into line, but we eventually made it inside, washed up, and went to lunch. Apparently the guardaria had gotten a big gift from somebody of a bunch of children´s dishes including patterned bowls, plates, cups, and little forks and spoons. They were all incredibly excited about it, but it seemed a weird gift, as there are other things that they could have used much more. They already had enough plastic dishes for everyone and although they were adult sized and the spoons were a bit big for the kids´ mouths, they sufficed just fine. I think money could have been much better invested in more books, supplies, training for the teachers, etc. rather than just a more appropriate set of something they already had!
Because of the lack of micros, I was going to leave early to be on time for lunch with Isabel, but when I told the teachers, they said to wait half an hour because they were baking me something. Of course that turned into nearly an hour, but it was really, really sweet of them and completely unexpected, as I hadn´t seen them do anything for the other volunteers that left a few weeks ago. They made me a big circular cake and wrote ´safe travels ilana´ on it and thanked me a ton for working with the kids. There was a whole separate cake in the oven for the kids and they said the whole cake was for me - I ate one slice and ended up giving the rest to a homeless guy who always begs on a corner that I pass. While I was waiting for the cake to finish, I just sat in the lunchroom and played with the kids and broke up some fights. I stayed longer than I have in the past, to the point where they are completely done with lunch and clean up, and as expected, they just had the kids running around like crazy as usual with nothing to do but wrestle and fight each other in a small space. Would have been a nice time to have my camera and get the kids focused on that and get some good shots, ugh! I wish I could have made more of an impact on center when I was there - I know that the kids who participated enjoyed the activities I did with them and liked having me around, but I don´t think I was able to make any changes that will last. I tried talking quite a bit with the teachers about different ideas and things to do with the kids and they happily agreed to it all, but from what I´ve seen, it all went in one ear and out the other. Well, I tried...
Eventually left and tried to catch a taxi back to the center, but all the taxis that passed were full because that was the only form of transportation available today. Eventually caught a collectivo (shared taxi) with a couple of others and was way overcharged for the short ride. Got to lunch just before the place closed and gobbled down my food as they were turning off the lights and shutting down for the day. Missed Isabel, but I might see her tonight at Fox since she has classes while I´m there.
Then it was time to find out about the road block situation. I asked around and can´t get any clear information about what´s happening. A lot of the roads around the country are blocked off and even taxis can´t leave Sucre today - they don´t know yet about tomorrow. One tourist agency I asked told me to come back in a few hours, which I will do, and also ask a bunch more until I find somebody who can tell me something. I was planning on taking a 6:30am bus to Potosi tomorrow morning and had a pretty tight schedule for the next week, culminating in a plane flight that I have booked from a place I don´t know if I´ll even have time anymore to make it to! Fingers crossed that the roads open tomorrow, otherwise I have lots of rearranging to do.
When I finally got there, I just about walked out because it seemed like there was nothing I could do whatsoever. It was late but the kids weren´t split into their age groups yet. Most of the older kids were sitting at the table fairly quietly doing nothing, aside from a few of the trouble makers, and all of the little guys raced around the room, climbed on the chairs and tables, and crawled all over the place. I wanted to start my C lesson with the older kids and tried to get the little ones over into their room, but to no avail. The room was complete chaos with hair pulling, punching and hitting, screaming, and kids on top of all the furniture. The teachers sat in the corner talking amongst themselves and I went up to them and asked if they could help take the little ones into the other room so that I could work with the older ones. I´m fairly certain I said it in clear Spanish and also gestured to the little guys on the table, and they said they would help. But what did they do... they got up and walked outside to consider chatting and laughing. At that point, I almost just gave up and left for the day, but it wasn´t the kids fault at all so I made myself stay. I let a couple of the better behaved little ones stay at the table, and picked up a few of the others and plopped them into a room with toys. Some of the rascal older boys were racing around, but I just tuned them out because there was no way to get all of my kids to sit still with the teachers being oh so helpful. I started with my review of B and went into C, and the kids who were sitting at the table did a good job of paying attention and calling out the names of the images I had printed. Even a little girl who is barely three joined in with the others in calling out the names of things and that they started with C. There continued to be chaos all around us, but the more focused kids are very good at tuning that out. Handed out papers and they all got to work coloring and gluing. The little glue bottles I had bought last week had mostly disappeared already, so I went around with a big tub of paste and put dabs on their papers once they told me what the picture was and what letter it started with. I also had a bunch of face (cara in spanish) stickers and put those on the table, which they loved. The faces were of all different colors and emotions and to my surprise, the kids actually described each of the faces outloud before sticking it on their paper. Randomly in the middle of the activity while the kids at the table were clearly engaged, the teachers came in, made everyone sit down on the floor against the wall, and gave them oranges. Um, ever think to wait for snacktime until they are done with the activity since they are actually focused on something for once instead of running wildly? But luckily, most of the kids liked the project so much that they quickly finished their oranges and came back to take their places. I got them all to write their names on their papers, or at least trace over the letters that I wrote - we´ve been doing that at the end of each day´s project and some of them seem to be getting better at that. The teachers continued to be of absolutely no use - I looked in on the room of one and two year olds and they were just playing by themselves, no teacher in sight. The room was open to the main area I was in with the older kids, but still, quite unbelievable. There was such constant noise that I ignored most of it, but occasionally went over to break up one fight or another. I got the girls to help me clean up the project and put away the chairs and tables, and the older boys went off into the room usually meant for the three to four year olds and actually sat calmly to do puzzles, very odd. Since Nicky was sick, I was the only volunteer there and there was no way I was taking my usual group of crazies outside, so I took just five girls with me who happened to be nearby - three of my older girls and two younger ones. Gave them my usual lecture that they needed to listen while we were outside, and they did a good job actually holding hands and singing a song the entire time we walked over to the yard. After we were outside for a bit, another girl and boy from the oldest group came out - I was not excited to see Miguel outside because he was the most troublesome last week. But being outside with just girls seemed to keep away his rascalness and everyone behaved. Getting them to go back inside was the usual ordeal with most of them thinking it was funny to run away rather than get into line, but we eventually made it inside, washed up, and went to lunch. Apparently the guardaria had gotten a big gift from somebody of a bunch of children´s dishes including patterned bowls, plates, cups, and little forks and spoons. They were all incredibly excited about it, but it seemed a weird gift, as there are other things that they could have used much more. They already had enough plastic dishes for everyone and although they were adult sized and the spoons were a bit big for the kids´ mouths, they sufficed just fine. I think money could have been much better invested in more books, supplies, training for the teachers, etc. rather than just a more appropriate set of something they already had!
Because of the lack of micros, I was going to leave early to be on time for lunch with Isabel, but when I told the teachers, they said to wait half an hour because they were baking me something. Of course that turned into nearly an hour, but it was really, really sweet of them and completely unexpected, as I hadn´t seen them do anything for the other volunteers that left a few weeks ago. They made me a big circular cake and wrote ´safe travels ilana´ on it and thanked me a ton for working with the kids. There was a whole separate cake in the oven for the kids and they said the whole cake was for me - I ate one slice and ended up giving the rest to a homeless guy who always begs on a corner that I pass. While I was waiting for the cake to finish, I just sat in the lunchroom and played with the kids and broke up some fights. I stayed longer than I have in the past, to the point where they are completely done with lunch and clean up, and as expected, they just had the kids running around like crazy as usual with nothing to do but wrestle and fight each other in a small space. Would have been a nice time to have my camera and get the kids focused on that and get some good shots, ugh! I wish I could have made more of an impact on center when I was there - I know that the kids who participated enjoyed the activities I did with them and liked having me around, but I don´t think I was able to make any changes that will last. I tried talking quite a bit with the teachers about different ideas and things to do with the kids and they happily agreed to it all, but from what I´ve seen, it all went in one ear and out the other. Well, I tried...
Eventually left and tried to catch a taxi back to the center, but all the taxis that passed were full because that was the only form of transportation available today. Eventually caught a collectivo (shared taxi) with a couple of others and was way overcharged for the short ride. Got to lunch just before the place closed and gobbled down my food as they were turning off the lights and shutting down for the day. Missed Isabel, but I might see her tonight at Fox since she has classes while I´m there.
Then it was time to find out about the road block situation. I asked around and can´t get any clear information about what´s happening. A lot of the roads around the country are blocked off and even taxis can´t leave Sucre today - they don´t know yet about tomorrow. One tourist agency I asked told me to come back in a few hours, which I will do, and also ask a bunch more until I find somebody who can tell me something. I was planning on taking a 6:30am bus to Potosi tomorrow morning and had a pretty tight schedule for the next week, culminating in a plane flight that I have booked from a place I don´t know if I´ll even have time anymore to make it to! Fingers crossed that the roads open tomorrow, otherwise I have lots of rearranging to do.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Tarabuco
Yesterday while I was at a museum in the middle of taking pictures, my camera broke. Again. With the same problem of the lens refusing to open or if it eventually opened, refusing to close. It took me a long time on a Saturday evening to find a repair shop that was open, but eventually dropped off the camera and was told I wouldn’t get it back till Monday night. It’s so ridiculously expensive compared to everything else here, and this is the second time I have to get the same problem fixed. Getting the zipper on my backpack repaired cost 15Bs (just over 2 bucks), whereas getting the camera fixed cost 400Bs the first time and 350Bs this time (over 100 USD total!). Which is a huge, huge amount of money here that would cover about 3 weeks in a hostel, etc – so I don’t really get why the electronics repair store gets so much money compared to anywhere else around. But beyond the money, the worst thing about not having my camera for two days is missing pictures of two important things – the Sunday market that I went to today and most importantly, my kids, who I’ve hardly taken any pictures of and won’t be able to anymore! The other girl at my house is leaving tonight and the other volunteer with the kids has a broken camera as well (as do way too many other tourists around here, there’s probably so much dust in the air that it messes with the lenses). Oh the joys of broken and malfunctioning things.
Yesterday morning, made on the brunch on the terrace with Sofie (Belgium) who is living at my house and two people she knew from London and Australia. It was a nice sunny morning and we have a good view of the city from the terrace. We had a delicious little feast of eggs, cheese, tomato, and avocado on baguettes, banana and dulce de leche sandwiches, chopped up mangos and papayas, and coffee/tea.
This morning, I went with the same group to Tarabuco. We took a “tourist bus” aka a normal micro filled with tourists an hour and a half away to the Sunday market. We winded around countless curves through the dry valley. In the distance were endless hillsides, mostly brown but with patches of green, scattered with brush, cacti, and oddly, eucalyptus trees. We were dropped off at the edge of the market and I was surprised at how calm it was, but that was just the edge. After stopping for coffee/juice at a little café where it took the owner the longest time to even acknowledge that we were there, we started strolling around the market. I wish I could have had my camera, but I did steal all of Sofie’s market pictures and a few of the kids, since she spent a couple days at the guardaria finishing up a mural that some other volunteers had started.
Did lots of bargaining, the best technique being asserting your lowest price and walking away when they decline, just to be called right back and get it at that price. There was one funny incident where I was looking at a piece of fabric that had 55 on it in masking tape and the owner of the stall told me that it was cheap and only cost 80Bs. I said 55, he said no, 80, and I showed him the tape and he got embarrassed and said fine, 55. I didn’t end up buying it, this was just at the beginning when I was gauging out prices, but it was an amusing way to start the morning and to show just how high the prices they start with would be. There were some very open areas where it was easy to walk slowly and browse, and other areas where there was a constant push from behind and I kept checking to make sure my backpack was closed, eventually moving it to the front. There were stalls of assorted imported shoes and clothes, laundry soaps, electronics, offerings to Pachamama (mother earth), and the usual array of miscellaneous everything. Beyond just experiencing the bustling market environment, I was there for the artisan goods - stall upon stall of brightly colored woven hats, scarves, blankets and fabrics, sweaters, and some jewelry, though much less of that than I expected. I still have some things that I am going to wait to buy because I don’t want to lug my extra bag around just yet, so I’ll have to do more searching in shops around Santa Cruz before I leave, but I did stock up on some things today. It was definitely very touristy, as I had heard and expected, and the locals there were much less friendly than any I have encouraged elsewhere. There were incredibly pushy women who would shove bracelets into our faces or place them onto our wrists even when we repeatedly said no thank you, and they would continue to follow us around and do all they could to get the bracelets at our eye level. I’m much more likely to buy from people who aren’t forcing things in front of me! As we walked deeper into the market, it actually got a bit less touristy to my surprise, with no more textiles and simply random everything else that locals were buying, and further in yet was the food market, similar to the Mercado Central in Sucre. No idea why, but there was a dead flamingo hanging on the wall outside one of the stalls. Wonderful! On the way back to the bus, I bought a papa relleno (a filled potato, this time with egg) from two girls who stared at me with huge eyes. And of course, couldn’t go without an ice cream, which they sell constantly in Chuquisaca area (the department of Bolivia that Sucre is in).
Back in town, it was immediately affirmed that it was Sunday – the world was completely shut down. The supermarket and the occasional restaurant and internet café were open, but nothing was happening anywhere. The usual colorful central market was closed, tarps covering most of the outside stalls. All of the storefronts had their metal doors pulled down, and the streets lacked their typical constant flow of cars and honking of horns. Even in the central plaza, only the pigeons and dogs remained to play, the normal crowds of people, snack vendors, and juice squeezers all inside for the day. A few weeks ago, there were quite a lot of people at the children’s park, but aside from being there, not too many people seem to venture out on Sunday afternoons.
Yesterday morning, made on the brunch on the terrace with Sofie (Belgium) who is living at my house and two people she knew from London and Australia. It was a nice sunny morning and we have a good view of the city from the terrace. We had a delicious little feast of eggs, cheese, tomato, and avocado on baguettes, banana and dulce de leche sandwiches, chopped up mangos and papayas, and coffee/tea.
This morning, I went with the same group to Tarabuco. We took a “tourist bus” aka a normal micro filled with tourists an hour and a half away to the Sunday market. We winded around countless curves through the dry valley. In the distance were endless hillsides, mostly brown but with patches of green, scattered with brush, cacti, and oddly, eucalyptus trees. We were dropped off at the edge of the market and I was surprised at how calm it was, but that was just the edge. After stopping for coffee/juice at a little café where it took the owner the longest time to even acknowledge that we were there, we started strolling around the market. I wish I could have had my camera, but I did steal all of Sofie’s market pictures and a few of the kids, since she spent a couple days at the guardaria finishing up a mural that some other volunteers had started.
Did lots of bargaining, the best technique being asserting your lowest price and walking away when they decline, just to be called right back and get it at that price. There was one funny incident where I was looking at a piece of fabric that had 55 on it in masking tape and the owner of the stall told me that it was cheap and only cost 80Bs. I said 55, he said no, 80, and I showed him the tape and he got embarrassed and said fine, 55. I didn’t end up buying it, this was just at the beginning when I was gauging out prices, but it was an amusing way to start the morning and to show just how high the prices they start with would be. There were some very open areas where it was easy to walk slowly and browse, and other areas where there was a constant push from behind and I kept checking to make sure my backpack was closed, eventually moving it to the front. There were stalls of assorted imported shoes and clothes, laundry soaps, electronics, offerings to Pachamama (mother earth), and the usual array of miscellaneous everything. Beyond just experiencing the bustling market environment, I was there for the artisan goods - stall upon stall of brightly colored woven hats, scarves, blankets and fabrics, sweaters, and some jewelry, though much less of that than I expected. I still have some things that I am going to wait to buy because I don’t want to lug my extra bag around just yet, so I’ll have to do more searching in shops around Santa Cruz before I leave, but I did stock up on some things today. It was definitely very touristy, as I had heard and expected, and the locals there were much less friendly than any I have encouraged elsewhere. There were incredibly pushy women who would shove bracelets into our faces or place them onto our wrists even when we repeatedly said no thank you, and they would continue to follow us around and do all they could to get the bracelets at our eye level. I’m much more likely to buy from people who aren’t forcing things in front of me! As we walked deeper into the market, it actually got a bit less touristy to my surprise, with no more textiles and simply random everything else that locals were buying, and further in yet was the food market, similar to the Mercado Central in Sucre. No idea why, but there was a dead flamingo hanging on the wall outside one of the stalls. Wonderful! On the way back to the bus, I bought a papa relleno (a filled potato, this time with egg) from two girls who stared at me with huge eyes. And of course, couldn’t go without an ice cream, which they sell constantly in Chuquisaca area (the department of Bolivia that Sucre is in).
Back in town, it was immediately affirmed that it was Sunday – the world was completely shut down. The supermarket and the occasional restaurant and internet café were open, but nothing was happening anywhere. The usual colorful central market was closed, tarps covering most of the outside stalls. All of the storefronts had their metal doors pulled down, and the streets lacked their typical constant flow of cars and honking of horns. Even in the central plaza, only the pigeons and dogs remained to play, the normal crowds of people, snack vendors, and juice squeezers all inside for the day. A few weeks ago, there were quite a lot of people at the children’s park, but aside from being there, not too many people seem to venture out on Sunday afternoons.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Tidbits Around Sucre
6/10 3pm
My A lesson the other day went amazingly well, I was really surprised. Most of the kids readily said A when I asked them what letter a picture of their paper started with, and they really enjoyed gluing everything to the paper. A few of the younger ones in the group had a hard time focusing on the task and mostly just played with the glue, but most of the kids seemed to understand and like what we were doing. The oldest girl, Maria Elba, glued down one of each picture and then went to the window using other cut outs of these pictures to trace them – she’s only six, but they were near perfect tracing jobs. A few of the others caught onto this as well and did some tracing, and all the kids stayed at the table for about an hour, which was really, really surprising but awesome. We’ve made it a routine to go outside after snack and there are usually quite a few squabbles outside and tons of disobedience, but that day, they somehow all played together nicely and calmly. No fights, no children trying to climb over the fence and escape, no crazy screaming, no refusal when it was time to go back inside. Quite the odd morning, a complete reversal of the usual. I had hoped that the next day would be similar but nope, it was in the air to be wild again! I started the B lesson with a review of A and the older ones in group were able to remember words we had used the day before as well as other A words, and got engaged in B as well. But many of them (aka the boys) decided to be complete rascals and thought it was more fun to run around the room screaming and attack each other. They have at least a small amount of respect for the teacher and will stop doing something bad if she yells at them – probably from the threat of being smacked – but the kids had no respect for Nicky or I. Using our presence as an opportunity to escape to who knows where, the teacher disappeared and we were left with a bunch of misbehaving wild children. Two of the boys in particular kept grabbing pencils and drumming them on the table as they screamed – the scene was ridiculous and deafening, but the somehow tuned this out girls stayed at the table with their gluing and coloring, showing us their work every once in a while for reassurance. I’m perfectly fine teaching the lessons, but given that the kids won’t respect us, it would be nice if the teacher stayed around to at least attempt to maintain order! She disappeared the entire morning, and when it was time for us to get the kids to wash their hands and walk to lunch, it was just Nicky and me there to accomplish this very difficult task. Chaos ensued and we couldn’t hear our own screams over theirs, nor did silence work as they maniacally ran around attacking each other and making as much noise as they could. Fun stuff.
I was going to do C today, but the teacher who usually has the middle group wasn’t there and it would have been one teacher left with about 20 one to three year olds. Not happening. So the older ones went on a walk all morning and I stayed in with the little guys. Did some coloring with the older of the group, as well as a bit of passing a ball around the circle and singing some songs. They were so much more well behaved than the older kids, except for two of the older in the group who later in the morning got really rowdy and thought it was hilarious to not listen. Tackling each other was more fun. There are no rules here at all about keeping your hands to yourself, inside voices, sharing, etc – anything goes, and scolding is very inconsistent. There was one baby girl, about one and a half, who was sitting there crying hysterically. Today was her second or third day and she was petrified to be away from her mom, but they did nothing whatsoever to comfort her. Their theory was that in another day or two, she would just adjust and be perfectly fine. I held her for a long time and she eventually stopped crying, but she would start again every time I left her side, so she spent the morning with me and the three year olds. I got her engaged in a bit in our activities and there was about an hour where she didn’t cry, which was awesome. When she later started crying randomly and I sat her in my lap, the teacher told me to leave her there to cry because otherwise she wouldn’t get accustomed. I said something about how the transition to being there should be gradual and done with the comfort of an adult, she wouldn’t just suddenly be happy after several days of crying in the corner. When Aileen stopped crying and picked up a crayon, the teacher seemed to see my point, hopefully it sticks. On and off there have been pedagogy students coming to evaluate the kids and today was their last today, so they brought a cake. We sat down the kids and let them dig their fingers into sticky slices of cake – though I had to hand feed Aileen hers – and then took the little guys to lunch. With bellies full of cake, getting their lunches into them was an ordeal and they preferred to run around like crazy instead of sitting nicely like usual in their chairs. Then all the older kids came in and were completely insane, having just been given candy as well and eaten all of that before lunch. Who knows what the teachers were thinking there! It was again a picture of complete chaos and given that the teachers did nothing about it but laugh, there was really nothing I could do but let it be. The transition to primary school for these kids will be interesting and probably pretty harsh!
The other day after lunch, I helped Isabel with a project for her English class, and it was such a nice relief from the challenge of my night students. I just helped with a bit of pronunciation and translating some difficult phrases as well as getting a general understanding of her reading assignment. Everything clicked the first time I said it and it was just such a change from my English classes. This week, the first class has only had one girl coming every day, so I’ve been giving her private lessons on wherever she wants help, but it’s still frustrating that even the present tense of the verb to be has yet to sink in. In the second class, we did a bunch of grammar review the last couple days. The 12 year old is really good at long sentences and understanding what’s going on, whereas the guy in his 20s has a ridiculously hard time and although he can often translate things from Spanish to English, getting any grammar into him is pretty impossible and stalls up the class for the others. They have a test tonight, so that will be interesting to see the results of.
Yesterday afternoon I took a micro to La Glorietta, a castle a few km outside of Sucre. Started off with a little history intro about the castle and its inhabitants by the museum guide, but only caught bits of it because he spoke quickly in Spanish to the group of us and I had no background to begin with on what to expect to hear. There was hardly any furniture in the castle; it was in a museum elsewhere and may be moved there eventually, but the architecture was really interesting. Very intricate ceilings, tall windows and doors, expansive mirrors, spiral staircases, stained glass, and multiple towers. I walked up the stairs of the central tower, tightly round and round and round the central column, having no idea how much further it was. The only light inside came from the circular windows on the edge of the narrow tower every couple of turns. Dizzily made my way to the outlook at the top, where I could look down onto the rest of the little castle as well as far out into the hillside.
On the ride back, I decided to stay on the micro and head to the Mercado Campesino on the opposite end of the city. It’s a huge outdoor market with absolutely everything there. I wanted to see the traditional food market, so stayed on the bus past the massive electronics and clothes sections, but then the bus wound up towards the terminal and I got off because I had gone too far. It was getting late, so I wandered a bit and then took a micro back to the center, never finding the food market, but still having an interesting experience of watching the city pass by.
The other night, went with the girls from last weekend to a café for happy hour desserts – two for one. Unfortunately it meant two of the same thing, but with four of us, we still each got half a slice of really good chocolate cake and half a filled crepe. Yum! But that was pretty much dinner that night, it was so much food. Another time, went out with some other Fox volunteers after English classes and ended up joining with a pretty big group of foreigners with a Sucre meet-up of Couch Surfers. Tonight, some of us are going after classes to a vegetarian restaurant that is supposed to be really good. I have this weekend to spend around Sucre and then Monday is my last day with my kids and students. Then it´s on to the next legs of my trip with a mining town, the massive salt desert, a wild west-like land, and then a month in the jungle.
My A lesson the other day went amazingly well, I was really surprised. Most of the kids readily said A when I asked them what letter a picture of their paper started with, and they really enjoyed gluing everything to the paper. A few of the younger ones in the group had a hard time focusing on the task and mostly just played with the glue, but most of the kids seemed to understand and like what we were doing. The oldest girl, Maria Elba, glued down one of each picture and then went to the window using other cut outs of these pictures to trace them – she’s only six, but they were near perfect tracing jobs. A few of the others caught onto this as well and did some tracing, and all the kids stayed at the table for about an hour, which was really, really surprising but awesome. We’ve made it a routine to go outside after snack and there are usually quite a few squabbles outside and tons of disobedience, but that day, they somehow all played together nicely and calmly. No fights, no children trying to climb over the fence and escape, no crazy screaming, no refusal when it was time to go back inside. Quite the odd morning, a complete reversal of the usual. I had hoped that the next day would be similar but nope, it was in the air to be wild again! I started the B lesson with a review of A and the older ones in group were able to remember words we had used the day before as well as other A words, and got engaged in B as well. But many of them (aka the boys) decided to be complete rascals and thought it was more fun to run around the room screaming and attack each other. They have at least a small amount of respect for the teacher and will stop doing something bad if she yells at them – probably from the threat of being smacked – but the kids had no respect for Nicky or I. Using our presence as an opportunity to escape to who knows where, the teacher disappeared and we were left with a bunch of misbehaving wild children. Two of the boys in particular kept grabbing pencils and drumming them on the table as they screamed – the scene was ridiculous and deafening, but the somehow tuned this out girls stayed at the table with their gluing and coloring, showing us their work every once in a while for reassurance. I’m perfectly fine teaching the lessons, but given that the kids won’t respect us, it would be nice if the teacher stayed around to at least attempt to maintain order! She disappeared the entire morning, and when it was time for us to get the kids to wash their hands and walk to lunch, it was just Nicky and me there to accomplish this very difficult task. Chaos ensued and we couldn’t hear our own screams over theirs, nor did silence work as they maniacally ran around attacking each other and making as much noise as they could. Fun stuff.
I was going to do C today, but the teacher who usually has the middle group wasn’t there and it would have been one teacher left with about 20 one to three year olds. Not happening. So the older ones went on a walk all morning and I stayed in with the little guys. Did some coloring with the older of the group, as well as a bit of passing a ball around the circle and singing some songs. They were so much more well behaved than the older kids, except for two of the older in the group who later in the morning got really rowdy and thought it was hilarious to not listen. Tackling each other was more fun. There are no rules here at all about keeping your hands to yourself, inside voices, sharing, etc – anything goes, and scolding is very inconsistent. There was one baby girl, about one and a half, who was sitting there crying hysterically. Today was her second or third day and she was petrified to be away from her mom, but they did nothing whatsoever to comfort her. Their theory was that in another day or two, she would just adjust and be perfectly fine. I held her for a long time and she eventually stopped crying, but she would start again every time I left her side, so she spent the morning with me and the three year olds. I got her engaged in a bit in our activities and there was about an hour where she didn’t cry, which was awesome. When she later started crying randomly and I sat her in my lap, the teacher told me to leave her there to cry because otherwise she wouldn’t get accustomed. I said something about how the transition to being there should be gradual and done with the comfort of an adult, she wouldn’t just suddenly be happy after several days of crying in the corner. When Aileen stopped crying and picked up a crayon, the teacher seemed to see my point, hopefully it sticks. On and off there have been pedagogy students coming to evaluate the kids and today was their last today, so they brought a cake. We sat down the kids and let them dig their fingers into sticky slices of cake – though I had to hand feed Aileen hers – and then took the little guys to lunch. With bellies full of cake, getting their lunches into them was an ordeal and they preferred to run around like crazy instead of sitting nicely like usual in their chairs. Then all the older kids came in and were completely insane, having just been given candy as well and eaten all of that before lunch. Who knows what the teachers were thinking there! It was again a picture of complete chaos and given that the teachers did nothing about it but laugh, there was really nothing I could do but let it be. The transition to primary school for these kids will be interesting and probably pretty harsh!
The other day after lunch, I helped Isabel with a project for her English class, and it was such a nice relief from the challenge of my night students. I just helped with a bit of pronunciation and translating some difficult phrases as well as getting a general understanding of her reading assignment. Everything clicked the first time I said it and it was just such a change from my English classes. This week, the first class has only had one girl coming every day, so I’ve been giving her private lessons on wherever she wants help, but it’s still frustrating that even the present tense of the verb to be has yet to sink in. In the second class, we did a bunch of grammar review the last couple days. The 12 year old is really good at long sentences and understanding what’s going on, whereas the guy in his 20s has a ridiculously hard time and although he can often translate things from Spanish to English, getting any grammar into him is pretty impossible and stalls up the class for the others. They have a test tonight, so that will be interesting to see the results of.
Yesterday afternoon I took a micro to La Glorietta, a castle a few km outside of Sucre. Started off with a little history intro about the castle and its inhabitants by the museum guide, but only caught bits of it because he spoke quickly in Spanish to the group of us and I had no background to begin with on what to expect to hear. There was hardly any furniture in the castle; it was in a museum elsewhere and may be moved there eventually, but the architecture was really interesting. Very intricate ceilings, tall windows and doors, expansive mirrors, spiral staircases, stained glass, and multiple towers. I walked up the stairs of the central tower, tightly round and round and round the central column, having no idea how much further it was. The only light inside came from the circular windows on the edge of the narrow tower every couple of turns. Dizzily made my way to the outlook at the top, where I could look down onto the rest of the little castle as well as far out into the hillside.
On the ride back, I decided to stay on the micro and head to the Mercado Campesino on the opposite end of the city. It’s a huge outdoor market with absolutely everything there. I wanted to see the traditional food market, so stayed on the bus past the massive electronics and clothes sections, but then the bus wound up towards the terminal and I got off because I had gone too far. It was getting late, so I wandered a bit and then took a micro back to the center, never finding the food market, but still having an interesting experience of watching the city pass by.
The other night, went with the girls from last weekend to a café for happy hour desserts – two for one. Unfortunately it meant two of the same thing, but with four of us, we still each got half a slice of really good chocolate cake and half a filled crepe. Yum! But that was pretty much dinner that night, it was so much food. Another time, went out with some other Fox volunteers after English classes and ended up joining with a pretty big group of foreigners with a Sucre meet-up of Couch Surfers. Tonight, some of us are going after classes to a vegetarian restaurant that is supposed to be really good. I have this weekend to spend around Sucre and then Monday is my last day with my kids and students. Then it´s on to the next legs of my trip with a mining town, the massive salt desert, a wild west-like land, and then a month in the jungle.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Such A Different World
6/7/11 9:45pm
Yesterday at the vet was a very interesting experience. There wasn’t anything going on for the first couple hours, so I showed them the Pacific Petcare website and they were fascinated by the pictures of the hospital and fancy equipment. We were all just dawdling around and the vet student, Vicente, was playing around on his guitar. He was attempting to sing Jason Mraz’s I’m Yours in English, but had all the words jumbled together and funny. So we found the lyrics online as well as a Spanish translation so that he could understand the song – though a lot of the translation was really off because it took things too literally, so I attempted to translate the actual meaning for him. We spent a long time going through the beginning of the lyrics and working on the pronunciation.
Eventually, we had a couple patients, the last of whom was what made it such an fascinating evening. It was teacher’s day and there were no English classes, so I stayed at the clinic till almost nine. Around 6:45, an eleven-year-old Irish Setter named Leo arrived for a procedure – it was scheduled so late because the older doctor needs to be present for any procedures and he is out in the countryside all day. He gave a Ketamine cocktail both IV and IM to a point where Leo was pretty out but still moving around a bit. No sort of monitoring was done at all, not even with stethoscopes, which was a bit scary with an older dog and no labwork to ensure that anesthesia was even safe. When Leo arrived, it was clear that the procedure was to remove a huge growth on his eyelid, so I was confused when they first turned their attention to his ears once he was out. I thought maybe they were removing papillomas from the ears, but it turned out he just had an ear infection. They called it very severe and spent a really long time cleaning it out and applying topical antibiotics and steroids, though nothing oral or topical was sent home. One of the surprising things about this infection was how assertive they were that it was such an awful infection – it was clearly infected, but there wasn’t much inflammation and I’ve cleaned countless ears with much, much worse debris – maybe the different weather, different standards, etc. The older doctor did most of the cleaning, and the vet doing his residency sort of thing was allowed to help at times (as compared to the US where it was always us techs who did the cleaning). They wore masks as they cleaned the ears, but took them off for the growth removal part of the procedure, which was really odd. We kept flipping Leo back and forth as they would clean one ear, then the other, and then go back to the first. It took much, much longer than a similar ear infection would have taken to clean in the US with the solution that we used. I was mostly just weirded out, though, that they were doing all this while he was under anesthesia – it would be so much safer and cost effective to do it while he was awake. I asked about this and they said that they always treat ear infections with the pet under anesthesia because it causes too much suffering to do it while they are awake. That was definitely an interesting perspective and yes, it’s definitely not a pleasant experience for them, except for the occasional dog who appreciates getting that awful itch scratched. But if we were to tell owners in the US that we needed to sedate or anesthetize their pet for an ear infection (minus the occasional dog with major aggression or anxiety issues), hell would probably break loose over the money, risk, and plain idea of doing that. It’s a very different way of thinking about and doing things in the veterinary world, not doing much anything at all aside from shots while the pet is awake – though they do reuse a needle multiple times on the same pet, which must hurt like crazy from how dull it is. So a very different line is drawn in terms of what is acceptable to inflict on our pets. Yet at the same time, there are countless street dogs in awful condition who won’t get an ear infection or even broken leg taken care of no matter what, and the dogs with owners who can’t afford to take them to the vet. I asked what would happen if a dog came in with an ear infection but the owner couldn’t afford to pay for the anesthesia, and they seemed appalled that I would suggest cleaning ears while the dog was awake. I tried asking several times, but never got a straight answer, so not quite sure what happens there - if they give in and do it without anesthesia, deal with the money loss and treat the animal as they usually would, or refuse to treat the animal in the name of not causing suffering, though of course still leaving the pet in misery with a bad infection. Very thought provoking to see the huge differences in vet med between here and California, not only based around finances and equipment but also around morals and recommended procedures and care. The complete lack of spays and neuters here is a whole other issue, with not having the money to do the surgery, though that really not making sense in the long run with the resulting massive overpopulation and pregnancy complications. It was definitely a good experience with the vet, very different from what I’ve seen and done in both Peru and California. But it was way too exhausting to go every day straight through from 8 to 8, so I’m not going to be going anymore while I’m here in Sucre. Finally had time today to do my laundry!
My kids were challenges today as usual. I tried to work with the older ones on learning to write their names, and a few of them did a good job and stayed focused, but most just sat there and refused to write a thing, flat out ignoring me when I encouraged them. I had bought letter stickers and a few of them got really into telling me the letters of their names so that I would give them stickers, and then trying to do it over and over again to get more stickers, but the others were uninterested or didn’t know the letters in their names at all. At a certain point, I had to just give up and let some of them scribble on their papers because there was no way they were going to pay me any attention. Tomorrow will be quite the test. I’m going to try and start going through the alphabet to teach it to them in a more engaging way than writing each letter a million times to fill up a paper and that’s that. I googled around this afternoon and printed out black and white images of things starting with the letter A in Spanish, as well as a bunch of upper and lower case As. It cost a bunch to print and photocopy these, but it seems like Fox will let me do it for either free or really cheap. So if the kids respond to the activity tomorrow, then I’ll keep on going through the alphabet, but if not, I don’t know what else to do with them. I bought a bunch of mini glue bottles and hopefully I can get them to sit around the table tomorrow morning, talk about things that start with the letter A, and then glue my cut out images and items on paper and color them. Fingers crossed!
And on to the last part of each of my days, teaching English. Yet another huge area where things are drastically different. I do my best to go through the lessons in an engaging way and get things to stick in their heads, but it just isn’t working. First off, the book and the general structure of the course are pretty awful. They are creating robots rather than people who can have conversations. They attempt to learn to follow generic model sentences and speak only in those, when they are able to even do that. When I try to transition into more conversational ways of saying things or do anything outside of a strict model sentence, they are completely lost. I don’t know if I had an especially amazing book and teacher when I was learning Spanish, but it was so, so much easier to move from rigid structure into more creative and open writing and speaking. It’s pretty much impossible to get them to move away from the molds or even understand anything that is said without being in a certain structure. They don’t have an understanding of what conjugations or infinitives or any grammatical things are, and are just dazed when I try to explain using examples from Spanish. I know that when I first started French it was hard getting used to the different grammatical concepts, but at least they were taught! In the book that’s used in this course and apparently used internationally as well, there are mostly themed chapters on what to robotically say in x situation. There are the interspersed grammar bits about possessive pronouns or how to use ‘to be’ or ‘to have’, but there’s really no solid grammar, nothing on creating sentences, subject-verb agreement, using the present tense, the basic things that have always been presented in my language classes. Doesn’t help that the teacher’s English isn’t great and I’m constantly correcting the grammar of the things she says to the class! I guess languages do come fairly easily to me, but I still have a difficult time seeing how hard it is for them, for example, to see that when something is plural in Spanish, it is usually plural in English – even direct translations where the structure is the same are often too challenging. One of the biggest problems is that they are just being fed phrases and memorizing them, but not understanding at all the workings of the language. Also, their education system is clearly not very strong so it’s hard to teach a new language when they don’t have a very solid grounding in doing basic book exercises in general.
The first class today had just one student again, though a different one this time, and she is apparently taking a basic English class through her university and wanted help with that. She has to write a skit in English with three others in her class and written about half a page so far. I explained all of her grammatical mistakes, and then we worked on writing more. Normally, in a skit, you would follow a theme, make it a conversation with a flow. Whether your native language or a brand new language, it seems common sense to have topics relate to each other and not just have choppy unrelated sentences. Especially when you have a personal translator to help change what you are thinking from your native language to a foreign language. But the skit went a bit like this – people greeted each other and asked where they were from, all good. Then it went on to whether they ate fish, how many brothers they had, and if they liked football. All completely disconnected and not part of the same conversation. She pretty much just came up with random sentences in Spanish and had me translate them to English, though I tried to get her to figure out the translations herself. I can’t grasp why someone, especially in a college setting, would have such difficulty stringing sentences together into a coherent conversation in their own language. All she had to do was input the Spanish into the Elana translation engine and there would be a skit that made sense in English! In my very beginning French and Spanish classes, we often had to do skits and they were hard without knowing many tenses or words, so they were sometimes very simple, but they at least followed a common theme and all the sentences fit together to make it a rational piece. I don’t mean in any way to bash the intelligence or culture of the people here and I hope it doesn´t seem that way; I’m just a bit bewildered over how different thing are, from learning and teaching styles to the way my kids’ and students’ minds seem to work in general.
Yesterday at the vet was a very interesting experience. There wasn’t anything going on for the first couple hours, so I showed them the Pacific Petcare website and they were fascinated by the pictures of the hospital and fancy equipment. We were all just dawdling around and the vet student, Vicente, was playing around on his guitar. He was attempting to sing Jason Mraz’s I’m Yours in English, but had all the words jumbled together and funny. So we found the lyrics online as well as a Spanish translation so that he could understand the song – though a lot of the translation was really off because it took things too literally, so I attempted to translate the actual meaning for him. We spent a long time going through the beginning of the lyrics and working on the pronunciation.
Eventually, we had a couple patients, the last of whom was what made it such an fascinating evening. It was teacher’s day and there were no English classes, so I stayed at the clinic till almost nine. Around 6:45, an eleven-year-old Irish Setter named Leo arrived for a procedure – it was scheduled so late because the older doctor needs to be present for any procedures and he is out in the countryside all day. He gave a Ketamine cocktail both IV and IM to a point where Leo was pretty out but still moving around a bit. No sort of monitoring was done at all, not even with stethoscopes, which was a bit scary with an older dog and no labwork to ensure that anesthesia was even safe. When Leo arrived, it was clear that the procedure was to remove a huge growth on his eyelid, so I was confused when they first turned their attention to his ears once he was out. I thought maybe they were removing papillomas from the ears, but it turned out he just had an ear infection. They called it very severe and spent a really long time cleaning it out and applying topical antibiotics and steroids, though nothing oral or topical was sent home. One of the surprising things about this infection was how assertive they were that it was such an awful infection – it was clearly infected, but there wasn’t much inflammation and I’ve cleaned countless ears with much, much worse debris – maybe the different weather, different standards, etc. The older doctor did most of the cleaning, and the vet doing his residency sort of thing was allowed to help at times (as compared to the US where it was always us techs who did the cleaning). They wore masks as they cleaned the ears, but took them off for the growth removal part of the procedure, which was really odd. We kept flipping Leo back and forth as they would clean one ear, then the other, and then go back to the first. It took much, much longer than a similar ear infection would have taken to clean in the US with the solution that we used. I was mostly just weirded out, though, that they were doing all this while he was under anesthesia – it would be so much safer and cost effective to do it while he was awake. I asked about this and they said that they always treat ear infections with the pet under anesthesia because it causes too much suffering to do it while they are awake. That was definitely an interesting perspective and yes, it’s definitely not a pleasant experience for them, except for the occasional dog who appreciates getting that awful itch scratched. But if we were to tell owners in the US that we needed to sedate or anesthetize their pet for an ear infection (minus the occasional dog with major aggression or anxiety issues), hell would probably break loose over the money, risk, and plain idea of doing that. It’s a very different way of thinking about and doing things in the veterinary world, not doing much anything at all aside from shots while the pet is awake – though they do reuse a needle multiple times on the same pet, which must hurt like crazy from how dull it is. So a very different line is drawn in terms of what is acceptable to inflict on our pets. Yet at the same time, there are countless street dogs in awful condition who won’t get an ear infection or even broken leg taken care of no matter what, and the dogs with owners who can’t afford to take them to the vet. I asked what would happen if a dog came in with an ear infection but the owner couldn’t afford to pay for the anesthesia, and they seemed appalled that I would suggest cleaning ears while the dog was awake. I tried asking several times, but never got a straight answer, so not quite sure what happens there - if they give in and do it without anesthesia, deal with the money loss and treat the animal as they usually would, or refuse to treat the animal in the name of not causing suffering, though of course still leaving the pet in misery with a bad infection. Very thought provoking to see the huge differences in vet med between here and California, not only based around finances and equipment but also around morals and recommended procedures and care. The complete lack of spays and neuters here is a whole other issue, with not having the money to do the surgery, though that really not making sense in the long run with the resulting massive overpopulation and pregnancy complications. It was definitely a good experience with the vet, very different from what I’ve seen and done in both Peru and California. But it was way too exhausting to go every day straight through from 8 to 8, so I’m not going to be going anymore while I’m here in Sucre. Finally had time today to do my laundry!
My kids were challenges today as usual. I tried to work with the older ones on learning to write their names, and a few of them did a good job and stayed focused, but most just sat there and refused to write a thing, flat out ignoring me when I encouraged them. I had bought letter stickers and a few of them got really into telling me the letters of their names so that I would give them stickers, and then trying to do it over and over again to get more stickers, but the others were uninterested or didn’t know the letters in their names at all. At a certain point, I had to just give up and let some of them scribble on their papers because there was no way they were going to pay me any attention. Tomorrow will be quite the test. I’m going to try and start going through the alphabet to teach it to them in a more engaging way than writing each letter a million times to fill up a paper and that’s that. I googled around this afternoon and printed out black and white images of things starting with the letter A in Spanish, as well as a bunch of upper and lower case As. It cost a bunch to print and photocopy these, but it seems like Fox will let me do it for either free or really cheap. So if the kids respond to the activity tomorrow, then I’ll keep on going through the alphabet, but if not, I don’t know what else to do with them. I bought a bunch of mini glue bottles and hopefully I can get them to sit around the table tomorrow morning, talk about things that start with the letter A, and then glue my cut out images and items on paper and color them. Fingers crossed!
And on to the last part of each of my days, teaching English. Yet another huge area where things are drastically different. I do my best to go through the lessons in an engaging way and get things to stick in their heads, but it just isn’t working. First off, the book and the general structure of the course are pretty awful. They are creating robots rather than people who can have conversations. They attempt to learn to follow generic model sentences and speak only in those, when they are able to even do that. When I try to transition into more conversational ways of saying things or do anything outside of a strict model sentence, they are completely lost. I don’t know if I had an especially amazing book and teacher when I was learning Spanish, but it was so, so much easier to move from rigid structure into more creative and open writing and speaking. It’s pretty much impossible to get them to move away from the molds or even understand anything that is said without being in a certain structure. They don’t have an understanding of what conjugations or infinitives or any grammatical things are, and are just dazed when I try to explain using examples from Spanish. I know that when I first started French it was hard getting used to the different grammatical concepts, but at least they were taught! In the book that’s used in this course and apparently used internationally as well, there are mostly themed chapters on what to robotically say in x situation. There are the interspersed grammar bits about possessive pronouns or how to use ‘to be’ or ‘to have’, but there’s really no solid grammar, nothing on creating sentences, subject-verb agreement, using the present tense, the basic things that have always been presented in my language classes. Doesn’t help that the teacher’s English isn’t great and I’m constantly correcting the grammar of the things she says to the class! I guess languages do come fairly easily to me, but I still have a difficult time seeing how hard it is for them, for example, to see that when something is plural in Spanish, it is usually plural in English – even direct translations where the structure is the same are often too challenging. One of the biggest problems is that they are just being fed phrases and memorizing them, but not understanding at all the workings of the language. Also, their education system is clearly not very strong so it’s hard to teach a new language when they don’t have a very solid grounding in doing basic book exercises in general.
The first class today had just one student again, though a different one this time, and she is apparently taking a basic English class through her university and wanted help with that. She has to write a skit in English with three others in her class and written about half a page so far. I explained all of her grammatical mistakes, and then we worked on writing more. Normally, in a skit, you would follow a theme, make it a conversation with a flow. Whether your native language or a brand new language, it seems common sense to have topics relate to each other and not just have choppy unrelated sentences. Especially when you have a personal translator to help change what you are thinking from your native language to a foreign language. But the skit went a bit like this – people greeted each other and asked where they were from, all good. Then it went on to whether they ate fish, how many brothers they had, and if they liked football. All completely disconnected and not part of the same conversation. She pretty much just came up with random sentences in Spanish and had me translate them to English, though I tried to get her to figure out the translations herself. I can’t grasp why someone, especially in a college setting, would have such difficulty stringing sentences together into a coherent conversation in their own language. All she had to do was input the Spanish into the Elana translation engine and there would be a skit that made sense in English! In my very beginning French and Spanish classes, we often had to do skits and they were hard without knowing many tenses or words, so they were sometimes very simple, but they at least followed a common theme and all the sentences fit together to make it a rational piece. I don’t mean in any way to bash the intelligence or culture of the people here and I hope it doesn´t seem that way; I’m just a bit bewildered over how different thing are, from learning and teaching styles to the way my kids’ and students’ minds seem to work in general.
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