Back to School

At this point, I've traveled in 10 Spanish speaking countries and yet, have managed to squeak by with a barely rudimentary grasp of the language.  In 9th grade, we learned to say, "I like to dance", but beyond that, I don't remember anything.  I've cobbled together some essential conversation skills from the Lonely Planet phrasebook, but unless it's explicitly laid out, I'm pretty clueless.  It was time to put in the effort to form complete, grammatically-correct sentences, all on my own.

Sucre, Bolivia's judicial capital and sight of independence, has become a popular place for learning Spanish.  With a population over 200,000 people, Sucre is a "big" little city.  There are no glass office buildings, only whitewashed colonial architecture.  It's a beautiful city, home to striking churches and museums, a green central plaza, and it's a pleasant place to take classes.  My biggest criticism of the city are the tight streets. Since the preserved city-center was constructed before cars were prevalent, nearly every street is forced to accommodate an unreasonable amount of foot and automobile traffic.  The sidewalk are thin slices of concrete laid down between the street and building fronts.  Oncoming pedestrians force you into the narrow street where cars are unlikely to slow down.  I keep waiting to get clipped in the back of the head by a bus's extended side-mirror.

From Bolivia Pt II

From Bolivia Pt II

From Bolivia Pt II

I've been taking 4 hours of private lessons every day (Mon - Fri) for the past few weeks which brings feeling of a routine.  Most days I have homework, which means I am content to do absolutely nothing for a few hours of the day.  I've made friends with a few travelers who have since come and gone, as well as a few locals I met through couchsurfing.  I also managed to pick up a local girl at the bar, who spoke absolutely no English, which I considered a linguistic victory.  We hung out a few times, and she took me to the movies for my birthday, but I blew off our Saturday night plans and now she wants nothing to do with me.  I guess that's par for the course.

So I had my second consecutive birthday in South America and I'm no longer in my twenties, although people are consistently surprised by my age.  I don't know why, maybe because I still have acne.  After seeing "Alice in Wonderland" in Spanish (it felt wrong to have Johnny Depp dubbed over), I met up with my couchsurfing friends at the bar.  As closing time set in, we moved the party to an after-hours kareoke club, where I sang "La Bamba" and "Let it Be" with a Korean girl.  The memories are unique if nothing else.

From a village near Sucre:

From Bolivia Pt II

From Bolivia Pt II

Kjarkas, the MOST popular Bolivian band was in town last weekend and it was all anyone could talk about.  Tickets were only $5.  They play traditional Andean folk music.  The evening was filled with not only music, but many regional dances, complete with costumes and story lines.  What impressed me about the experience was the multi-generational appeal of the music.  Young teenagers, old grandparents, it didn't matter, everyone loved it.

From Bolivia Pt II

From Bolivia Pt II

I finally found an occasion to use the video feature on my new camera:


Before setting up camp in Sucre, I spend a few days in La Paz, a much bigger city.  I caught the "Good Friday" parade, which was a nice little dose of South American Catholic culture. 

From Bolivia Pt II

The street markets in La Paz are a big dose of color and people.

From Bolivia Pt II

Generally speaking, the indigenous people really do not like to have their picture taken.  I try really hard to be respectful of this, but the temptation to get wonderful pictures is great.  The shots I have of the markets are taken while carrying my camera at waist level, with a wide-angle lens and fast shutter speed.  I click away indescriminately and as inconspicous as possible, and then try to crop down and rotate for an acceptable photo. 

From Bolivia Pt II

The one time I brought my camera up to my eye, I thought I could possibly take a picture without offending anyone.  This is that shot:

From Bolivia Pt II

The woman in the photo immediately covered her face with hat.  I tried to tell her that I was only taking a picture of the bags, and not her - I know, I lied.  I felt really rotten about it afterwords, and even now the photo makes me cringe.  But here it is, for your viewing pleasure.

I also went to the "Coca Museum" which gives quite an interesting history of the coca leaf and paints the U.S. in quite an unfavorable light for transforming the relatively benign experience of chewing coca leaves into a physically, economically, and socially destructive drug.   In the 1500's, the Spanish were quick to brand the coca leaf as a substance of the devil, until they realized that chewing the leaves increased the productivity of the indigenous slaves by staving off hunger and sleep.  The slaves were quickly caught up in a vicious cycle of needing the leaves to fulfill their quota of work, and simultaneously indebted to the Spanish, who controlled the supply of the leaves.

Coca leaves continue to play an important role for manual laborers in Bolivia.  This is especially true for the miners living in Potosi.  For a really sobering look at mining life and really a sobering perspective on life in general -- Get out your pencils -- please please check out the documentary "The Devil's Miner".  It's about a 14 year old boy working in the mines and the culture that surrounds it.  I promise you won't be disappointed.

I've had one stressful moment since being here.  The details are not so important but the general outline of the story involves my bag getting checked on to one bus, and me (accidentally) getting on a completely different bus. Then frantically trying to chase down the right bus in a taxi, which stalled out at a tollbooth.  It's a little embarrassing because while my bag was headed for a city 12 hrs away, I was chatting up some American girls (just out of college), destroying a cork on a bottle of wine with my Leatherman tool, and feeling pretty good about myself.  Everything turned out ok, but it's not a good feeling knowing that all of your earthly possessions are showing up at a bus station without you.

From Bolivia Pt II

Change of Plans

Where are you from? How long have you been here?  How long are you traveling?  How far into your travels are you? Where are you headed to? Where did you come from? - These are the questions that come up over and over again when you're staying in low-budget hostals.  It has all the charm of asking someone what they do for a living, but still, this is how valuable travel information gets passed along.  Plus, they are questions that everyone has can answer.

So I was talking to this Dutch guy, and we were running over our travel itineraries.  He seemed genuinely disappointed at how many places I would not be visiting in South America.  Since I don't have a strict travel agenda, I was curious to hear what he thought were good places to visit.  It was quickly clear that he thought I should spend my entire trip in South America.  I told him I would also like to visit Africa and Asia.  He sort of scoffed at the idea of visiting Africa and said that Africa didn't interest him at all.  At that point, I stopped caring about what he had to say.
 
The questions still remain: Where to go and how long to stay?

There is no answer, only hunches formed by small tidbits of information.  A destination "sounds" nice because of a blurb in an article or movie, or because of an offhanded comment overheard at a party.  Doing the research to find out what a place is really like is only going to form expectations and eliminate the possibility of discovering the unexpected, so I try to avoid that.  Also, I'm lazy.

My itinerary in Argentina began to feel stale.  I felt immersed in the culture of the tourism industry and a sea of other travelers, all following the same route, all doing the same things.  So I headed to Boliva to see the salt flats and to take Spanish lessons.  I stopped off in Santiago to get a Bolivian visa and to replace my camera battery charger, which I left wedged between the mattress and the wall at my hostel in El Calafate.  The visa was a 20 min stop at the Bolivian embassy.  The charger ($15 on amazon) took an entire afternoon of shopping and cost $85.

As far as big cities go, Santiago is a really pleasant: relatively clean, friendly people, good metro system, modern retail stores. Just outside the city is one of Chile's largest wine producers, Concha y Toro.  I took a tour of the vineyard, sampled, wine and ate Cabernet Savignion grapes right off the vine.

From Northern Chile

From Northern Chile

The 24 hour bus ride north into the desert of northern Chile was extended by 3 hours due to an ignited oil tanker in the middle of the highway.  It was something right out of the 6 o'clock news.  Fifty-foot flames,blacking billowing smoke, the whole bit.  We sat 100 yards from the accident in the desert's midday heat, watching the tanker's metal frame disintegrate from the intense heat.

I did some hiking in northern Chile before crossing the border to Bolivia.

From Northern Chile

From Northern Chile

From Northern Chile

The Bolivian salt flats and extra-terrestrial mountain landscape has been on my "to-see" list for a long time.  It's an area that is largely uninhabited and resembles nothing familiar to me.  The altitude of the road climbs to 16,000 feet.  A few tough species of grass are the only vegetation.  Minerals and algae create foreign colors in the earth and lakes, sulfur smokes from open geysers.  

The only way to see this region is to go on a guided tour with an outfit that is prepared to driving at high altitudes and on unforgiving terrain.  I was promised that there would be mechanical failures, and there were.  We had three Toyota Land Cruisers, with 5 or 6 people in each car.  Two of our vehicles broke down over the course of the 3 days.  The "roads" we traveled were just 2-tracks in the gravel, or sometimes we were just flying over wide plains of nothingness.

The Bolivian immigration office is the most remote border crossing I've ever done.  It's probably 60 miles from the Chilean immigration office and at an altitude of 15,000 ft.

From Southern Bolivia

My body was not happy with the sudden elevation change.  I've trekked at similar altitudes in India without problems, but also had the chance to acclimatize.  By noon the first day, I was curled up in the back of the Land Cruiser, getting tossed back and forth, and quietly praying for death.  I had the worst stomach ache, my head felt like it was being crushed in a vice, the sun seemed blindingly bright and I was entirely drained of energy.  By evening I was feeling much better, and by the next morning I had just a slight headache.  Most of the other people on the tour had headaches, but I seemed to have it the worst.  I took some beautiful photographs that day, but when I look at them, I'm just reminded of how awful I felt. 

From Southern Bolivia

From Southern Bolivia

From Southern Bolivia

From Southern Bolivia

Accommodations were sparse.  The first night we stayed in a basic concrete shelter equipped with solar panels for electricity.  The second night we stayed in a "salt hotel", where the floor, the walls, the tables, the chairs, are all made out of salt blocks.  It's very strange.  The next day, on the salt flats, we could see how they harvest the blocks.

From Southern Bolivia

From Southern Bolivia

The salt flats in Bolivia are the largest in the world and not surprisingly, really flat.  Over the area of 4,000 sq miles, the elevation changes by less than one meter.  They are used for calibration by NASA's altimeter satellites.  Also, you have a lot of fun with photography because the perspective never changes!

From Southern Bolivia

From Southern Bolivia

From Southern Bolivia

At a village along the way:

From Southern Bolivia

From Southern Bolivia

Check out picasa for more photos.


Also, my knee is still hurting.....but I am getting along ok.

Argentinian Patagonia

Lots to see in Argentina. First stop: Perito Moreno Glacier. It is one of South America's most accessible glaciers, and thus a huge tourist attraction. The visible field seen in the pictures is just the tip of glacier, which is 100 sq miles in size. The height of the visible ice wall is over 200 ft. I'm at a loss to say more about it.

From Argentinian Patagonia

From Argentinian Patagonia

The visitor center at Perito Moreno is quite nice, and they have built and extensive steel walkway system to view both faces of the glacier. I was overwhelmed by the number of people who were sporting heavy-duty hiking boots and extreme foul-weather gear for a walk that could have been done in a bathrobe and slippers. In 2001 I hiked the Inca Trail (Machu Picchu) in Peru. Before my trip, I invested in a $200 pair of hiking boots. As I struggled to haul my backpack up and down the Andes mountains, Peruvian porters wearing rubber sandals were flying past me and carrying twice as much weight. It was a good lesson. Proper gear is important, no doubt, but in most situations, expensive gear is really overkill. As for my $200 hiking boots? They are beautiful shoes which have stood the test of time, but I left them at home. The Torres Del Paine trek was at times quite difficult and my pack was heavy, but I managed to pull it off wearing Chaco sandals and a pair of wool socks, and my feet were never miserable.

Unfortunately, I did have an accident my last day of hiking. Spirits were high and I was moving quickly down the trail. I took an uncomfortably high step which resulted in a slight loss of balance and smashing my right knee into a rock. I initially thought that I had just bruised the area around my kneecap, but after several days it was clear the damage was more serious. My kneecap wasn't sliding up and down properly. Walking on flat ground was slightly painful, walking downhill was very painful. That made my next destination, El Chalten, a bit of a disappointment.

El Chalten is an outdoor enthusiast's Mecca. The town is fairly new, built up by granola-minded climbers and hikers. The end of main street is the trail head for the national park containing several mountain peaks, the most famous being Fitz Roy.

From Argentinian Patagonia

Good weather is notoriously hard to come by, so when my second morning offered a cloudless sky, my knee be damned, I hiked to the base of the peak. The base is an 8 mile hike from town, and the last bit climbs a half mile in elevation. The 16 mile round-trip hike is tough when you're feeling good, so with my knee it turned into a really painful ordeal on the return leg home. Still, I have to say that the weather over the next 4 days would have made the trip impossible for me had I waited. Cold wet wind dominated the skyline and snow prevented other hikers from reaching the top.

From Argentinian Patagonia

From Argentinian Patagonia

My hostel in El Chalten was actually a converted, single-family home. The upstairs bedrooms were crammed with either 4 or 5 bunk beds. Not ideal accommodations, but lying awake at night, listening to the howling, unrelenting wind outside, it was quite comforting knowing that we were all inside together. The owner of the hostel was a friendly guy, living next door with his wife and small children, who were happy to socialize with all the travelers. The main room downstairs was equipped with a picnic table and entertainment system, which played concert DVD's nearly all day long. The owner and I have some unique commonalities in our music taste and one night I walked in to see a concert of Joe Satriani playing on the tv. Joe Satriani is a hard rock guitarist who plays with a technical proficiency which is truly uncommon. You'd be hard pressed to find a serious guitarist who isn't familiar with Satriani's work. I've seen Joe in concert at least 10 times, so it's fair to say that I'm a big fan. I immediately planted myself in front of the tv while the owner and two of his friends had ceased conversation and were similarly drawn to the television. The four of us sat together, mesmerized by his moving fingers. In a place that felt a world away from home, it felt good sharing that experience with people who have been touched by the same (and somewhat obscure) music as me.

With the weather turning bitter and my knee upset with me, it was time to head north. Route 40 is to Argentina what Route 66 is to USA. It's over 3000 miles long. The southern section which gets you out of Patagonia is a lonely stretch of road. The 850 mile journey is largely on gravel road in an area that supports almost no vegetation. The bus ride down this stretch took 33 hours. Staring out into vast nothingness was another chance to feel small in the world.

From Argentinian Patagonia

(disclaimer: not actually route 40)