northampton, ma

After leaving Sucre the gang of us went south to Potosi, home of the richest silver mine in the history of the world, and one of the oldest mines period at around 400 years. In the 1800s Potosi was actually the biggest city in the Americas (including N.A.) due to the thousands of people coming in to either strike it rich or work for the miners. The mine is actually an entire mountain, in which there are over 100 seperate mines. We only visited one, which was plenty. 3 hours underground inside a stinking hellhole of a mountain was plenty. Temperatures around 90 degrees, asbestos and arsenic clinging to the walls, dynamite explosions echoing through the tunnels and spewing dust everywhere, poison gases and very thin air at over 15,000 ft, and an average tunnel height of about four and a half feet.

It was difficult. At some points I was forced to crawl on my hands and knees through tunnels barely three feet high. A claustrophobe would not handle this. Of the seven people who started out in my group, three couldn't make it past the first level and had to go out. The rest of us pressed on for two more hours, going down three floors into the mountain. For me it was never that scary of an experience, eventually you get used to the idea of being inside the earth and you stop thinking about it. The hard part was the heat and the height of the tunnels - physically exhausting work.

The real thing of interest in the mines are the miners themselves. These people work sometimes 24 hours at a time, with an average life expectancy of about 50 years old. Generally they die early due to a pulmioary disease, like silicosis or black lung. They spend all day chewing coca leaves to keep their body stimulated, drinking little and eating nothing (the dust clings to your hands and food, making you very sick if you eat inside the mine). The silver in the mine is long gone, yet thousands of people from Potosi work the mine in the hope of finding a new vein and being set for life. Most work in cooperatives (there is no mining company here) so they are in a sense independent contractors, able to set their own work schedule.

While that in a sense is a nice perk, the people work completely manually, with no machinery whatsoever. Going into the mine is like stepping back in time, seeing them work with dynamite and pick axes and trolley carts. The latter of which you witness them pushing manually down the tracks, two men pulling with ropes and two men pushing the cart from behind. It's heartbreaking to see their faces as they go about this incredibly difficult task, the strain of pushing tons of rocks in such conditions has almost erased their humanity and their faces are mainly expressionless.

By far the mines were one of the most interesting things done so far on the trip. Normally I oppose doing something of this sort, being the priveledged Westerner I am not one who enjoys touring the pain of the less advantaged. For example, I really dislike the people who travel to places like these and take those hideously cliched photographs of the down and out locals (you know what I am talking about, the guy who goes to Africa and takes pictures of hungry kids with flies on their faces, or the old weathered man sitting under the sun with death on his face). The miners however are benefitted by the visiting tourists in a large way: each guide takes his group to the miner's market before entering the mine, where we buy dynamite and coca and drinks for the miners and take these supplies and give them to the men working inside. So, in a way, the tourists provide something for a few miners and help them get through their day.

My second story is really a string of stories over a four day period, but they fit together so it's here in one.

After leaving Potosi (which is quite a nice town, not as pretty as the spic'n'span clean Sucre but has a lot more character and vibe) we headed to Uyuni. From here we got a tour through the famous Salar de Uyuni and parts south to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile.

It was four days of extremely difficult weather. Unbeknownst to us, once per year a three-day giant windstorm kicks into the region of southern Bolivia and northern Chile. Our merry gang of swashbuckling adventurers just happened to be touring the region at the same time this lovely tempest decided to make it's 2005 appearance. So while visiting some of the most magical and surreal places on earth, we also had to deal with extreme cold and extreme winds and just all around misearableness outdoors. It made for a hard experience but I suppose in a way made the remoteness and difficulty of the terrain even more real.

Imagine being on a perfectly flat plain, only instead of praire grass and scrubby trees all you see is a white crust that goes as far as the horizon. The crust is blinding in the sun, crunches under your feet, and is only interrupted by small islands of rock and red dirt, and on the horizon by far off mountains. The Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Plain) once upon a time was a gigantic salt lake, which as the climate changed over the millenia dried up and left us a thick salt crust. The salt plain covers a large area, it took us about 4 hours to drive across it. It's four hours of surreal pleasure as you look through your sunglasses and see the glaringly white ground contrast with the dark blue sky, with a whole lot of nothingness and silence around you.

The salt plain still has some of the lake's old islands to tramp across, which even adds to the Dali like nature of the place. One in particular features gigantic cactuses and prehistoic coral rock (yes, actual coral as if you were off of Florida or Australia).

From the salt plain, we continued the second day down into the very southern region of Bolivia. The entire area is one big mountainous desert, with basically no water to speak of, extreme temperature changes (from around 60-70 degrees during the day to under 0 degrees at night), and when we were their, a big gale of a wind. The area is famous for its salt lakes, each a different color or smell due to volcanic activity and various types of algae. White, red, and green lakes can be found here, along with fumaroles and geysers and all sorts of really fun stuff to see. Not to mention the flamingoes (yes, flamingoes living in South America, which sounds just as weird as finding coral hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, but I witnessed both with mine own eyes).

The windstorm kicked in on this day and made the experience outside our Jeep a rather miserable one. The day basically passed with us running out of the Jeep, snapping some pictures, and then running straight back in out of the shearing, bitterly cold wind. Remember that I mentioned this area is a desert, thus the wind also brought waves of sand and pebbles (yes, flying rocks) through the air, which aren't nice to your face, eyes, mouth or camera. On occasion I would have to walk backwards into the wind to keep myself from getting pelted by small rocks.

At this point we were really looking forward to getting into San Pedro in Chile, which our guidebook represented as being a nice town. We had dreams of good food, beer, and warm weather since San Pedro sits in the Atacama desert. I think I have learned that having great expectations in these countries is a great way to end up really frustrated. Plus, I should have expected the difficulties to come based off my previous attempts to get into Chile. You might remember about a month ago when I was denied entry to Chile by an earthquake, landslide, and border protests in the span of three days. Fate apparently wants me to spend as little time in that country as possible. Anyway, the story continues...

The third day we got up very early and went out on the Jeep again, visited some more lakes, and ended up at the Chilean border (which represented the end of our tour). From here we happily set out in a bus down into San Pedro, each of us having enjoyed our tour through the south of Bolivia, but really excited to get away from the outback and into civilization again. Especially since, on this third day, the windstorm returned as the sun rose, and made us miserable once again. Like I said at the top, we weren't aware of the annual appearance of the windstorm, so we figured it was just regular weather for the regionk, and that once we got out of this high moutain desert and down into the lowland Atacama desert in Chile that we would be leaving the altitude and the windstorm behind.

Oh so wrong. We hopped off the bus at the immigration point in Chile, at a low altitude of about 7,000 feet (compared to on average 13,000 feet in Bolivia), and were greeted with walls of blowing sand. Whereas on the tour we had a Jeep to jump in and escape the wind, here we had to wait outside the immigration office in a long line and basically eat sand. Then, after the customs were finished, we had to walk through San Pedro searching for a hostel, again eating sand as we walked down dusty dirt streets (no pavement here) in a sandstorm. Absolutely freaking miserable experience.

So we had expected an afternoon and night of relaxation, and instead found the same miserable storm that we had been trying to escape from. Everyone had plans of staying a few nights in San Pedro, but after an hour of dealing with the storm (not to mention the lack of electricity, the winds had blown over some power lines), everyone in our group of seven had decided to get the hell out of town. Desert towns like San Pedro only exist because something nearby of interest also exists (in this case some geysers and interesting rock formations), but in such weather no tours or buses were going out of town to these places, so there was zero reason to stay in town.

The decision was made: four of our group bought bus tickets and left that evening for Santiago, the countries capital, 24 hours away by bus. Chile is an incredibly long country. The other three, myself, Sam, and Tanya, were all about going to Argentina, which was only 11 hours away by bus. Which leads me into my next story.

Finally I am leaving La Paz. Arrived here on June 21, expecting to spend a few days, and instead spent two weeks. Last night was the perfect example of why I have stayed here so long: good people, Campari and soda, a first class sushi restaurant (with smoked trout fresh from Lake Titicaca), and a nice bar/club with good music. Well the good people I have been hangin out with since the bike ride (basically for the last four days) just happened to be heading in the same direction as me, so myself, Sam, Adrian, Emma, and another Matt are heading down to Sucre tonight. Really I am a bit sad to depart from here, it's one of those places that just appeals to me for reasons both known and unknown. It's like Bologna in a way, there's just a nice vibe about this place that I find very agreeable.

Anyways, after spending a good bit of time here just chilling out and enjoying the art of doing nothing, it's about time to get back on the trail and see what Bolivia has to offer.

I'm back again in La Paz, after spending a three days in Coroico, the town at the end of "the world's most dangerous road". The road from La Paz to Coroico was dubbed this by the Inter American Development Bank in the late 1990s after the bank approved funds to assist in the building of a newer, safer road to Coroico. The reason? The road has at least 20 miles of very narrow, single lane dirt track with a 3000 foot drop off the side into the valley below. Nearly every bend and corner has memorial crosses erected to those who have gone over the edge, and many victim's families do periodic traffic control at the corner where they lost their love ones. On my trip down the road I saw four such people, with flags green on one side and red on the other, to coordinate oncoming traffic.

Four people died on the road the day before.

As any traveller in search of adventure knows, whenever a place is called the "most dangerous" well you must go experience it for yourself. So I did, doing the 38 mile journey on a six hour bike ride. The trip was incredible and incredibly painful. The scenery along the way is beautiful, starting at over 15,000 feet up in the Andes and finishing around 5,000 feet down in the high jungle. The painful bit comes in at around three hours into the ride, when all the rocks and gaps and bumps in the road have rattled your hands into a clawlike stage where you can barely open and close them. Imagine how you would be holding on for dear life, attempting to avoid oncoming trucks and buses, falling off the cliff, or simply falling and bashing yourself into the ground. Out of the 28 or so who went only one person fell, which surprised me because fatigue really sets in after awhile and the road conditions are absolute crap.

But anyway, I obviously survived, and had a very nice time of it. To be honest, biking the road is entirely safer than going down it in a bus, and the company I used has been operating for 7 years without anyone dying. I did have to return to La Paz on a bus, but when going in this direction (uphill) you get the left "lane" and the traffic going to Coroico has to pass you on the right, or on the edge side. So it's a bit safer - although collisions happen all the time, and the downhill vehicle, having the momentum on its side, has been known to take both vehicles over the edge.

Ending here, off to get a pint at the pub.

Despite all my writing about the modern joys of La Paz, one thing in South America never changes: the electric showerhead. We at home are used to having hot water heaters, and a big ole tank of hot water ready to go when we want it. The South America traveller gets an entirely different experience.

Combining electricity and a water source seems to be a bad idea, and you definitely get the willies looking at the setups in some showers. Basically what I am describing is a big white plastic showerhead with wires running into it from the wall. The water enters through the pipe, and is sizzled by electric current inside the showerhead, and then falls down upon you as hot water. Some setups are better than others (electric tape covering the wires, etc) whereas others look like an electrocution waiting to happen.

And of course there is more! Since the water must be heated basically the second before it comes out of the showerhead, you have now enjoyed 7 weeks of low water pressure. Turn up the water pressure too high, and you get a lovely dose of cold water since the electricity doesn't have sufficient time to heat the water before it shoots out. Combine that with the fact that it's winter here, and most bathrooms are thus rather cold during the night and morning, and you are living an odd experience. About 5% of your body, or where the trickle of hot water from the shower lands on you, is nice and toasty. The other 95% is shivering. Good times!

Different people have different ideas of what travelling should be. But one rule I believe remains constant: the more travelling you have done, the more relaxed you are about the "meaning" of travelling. I remember my first solo adventure in Mediterranean Europe, when for about 6 weeks straight I was constantly going going going and seeing everything listed in my guidebook and making sure I "saw" the city (I eventually burned out and spent the next 6 weeks doing little but sitting on a beach). The meaning of travel then was one of constant activity, and getting the "most" out of my time. I, like most firsttimers, had forgot that vacations also mean relaxation.

Now - well now things are different. For example, yesterday I got up at around 1030, yawned, then went to the internet cafe. There I listened to some music, caught up on emails, and wrote here. Then I went downtown and got a pizza, and afterwards went to a cafe and had a smoothie and read the local newspaper. At 330 I caught the movie Batman Begins (quite good), then afterwards went back to my hotel and took a nap. At about 830 I got up again, went down to the English pub for a few hours and then hopped over to a club. So whereas two years ago my day would have read: cathedral, museum, monument; now it reads: music, pizza, internet, movie.

Both to me are proper travelling - after you do this backpacking thing a few times you learn that days spent doing nothing are just as worthwhile and enjoyable as days filled with activity. Especially 6 weeks into your trip, with 8 left to go. La Paz is a great destination for those looking to do absolutely nothing but vegetate and enjoy themselves: English movie theatres, varied food (I've had everything from muffins to shish kebabs, pizza to charquekan, smoothies to coca tea - and all well done), good nightlife, internet everywhere, nice cafes, etc. It's a dangerous place for a person with no plan, like myself, in the sense that you can get trapped into its cosmopolitan urbanity and forget that there actually are other places and things to see in the country. The lure of waking up and getting a bagel and cappucino, lounging about during the day, and then going out at night has kept me here a week now; who knows when it will end.

Continuing yesterdays story, day 4 in the Yunga Cruz trek was nothing short of really horribly difficult. Whereas the first days of the trek were only 4-5 hours of hiking per day, this day was an eight hour slog, downhill most of the way losing over 5000 feet in elevation (oh what pain on the knees), and worst of all, having to fight through a seriously overgrown trail. To explain further, day 1 to 3 were spent up in the Andes, whereas day 4 and 5 were spent hiking downhill into the hot, jungly valleys below. The contrast between the areas was quite striking and probably the best part of the trek. In sum, we started at about 12,000 feet, went as high as 13,500, and then descended over the last two days all the way down to a mere 5,500. It was only 18 miles in total, a small trek in terms of distance, but a difficult one in terms of trail conditions and elevation changes.

Jungly areas, like the one we hiked through on the last two days, are not exactly known for having well behaved plant life. And since this is a rarely used trail, very few people had tramped through, and not enough to make a difference in clearing out the trail. So, in short, I spent about 6 of the 8 hours ducking under trees, tripping on slippery moss covered rocks (these are really bad on a downhill hike), and swiping at all sorts of branches that covered the trail. In some areas you would look at the scenery in front of you and wonder how anyone could consider it a trail at all. It really was more bushwacking than hiking. A giant machete would have come in handy. The main issue was that you had things all around you trying to trip you up or knock you down or make you fall. The eye can only look in so many directions in so little time, and often you are looking up to avoid branches bent on decapitation and fail to notice that slippery rock you are about to step on. Or vice versa.

Some things of note did happen on these two days. First, and most interesting, was when I was hiking along a narrow pass, with a 15 inch wide path seperating me from the vertical rock wall to my right and the cliff edge to my left. Suddenly the dirt gave away from my left foot, sending my left leg plunging down the side. Luckily I was on balance and managed to catch myself with my right leg and foot, so as to keep myself from tumbling over the edge. My right arm smacked hard into the ground and went numb for a few minutes, but other than that I was alright. Safe to say, the trail was not the safest one in Bolivia. The other things were actually more painful, one being a thorn which caught me in the neck as I was hiking down a slope, which of course dug in nice and deep due to that delayed reaction between penetration and the brain registering that you have something painful stuck in you. The other event was an unfriendly branch which I didn't see that caught me dead in the eye. That didn't feel so good either.

But, somehow and someway, and feeling a bit like Teddy Roosevelt, we escaped from the jungle and made camp in the valley below. It was quite an experience, taxing your mind to the maximum (the hike was far more mentally than physically exhausting, especially the jungle day when having to deal with the frustrations of a trail that just won't let you be in peace), and arriving successfully on day 5 (yesterday) into our destination, the lovely little town of Chulumani. In about a half hour I return back to La Paz, a land of civilization (meaning pizza, falafel, bagels, beer on tap, and a real bed), and with but a few blisters and sore joints to complain about. After five days of camp food and hard ground, it will be a pleasure.

Last Friday, the 24th, I fell off the face of the earth... and landed right into a big pile of it. I of course mean I fell off the civilized earth of internet and restaurants, and ended up in a mess of nature and a really long, tiring trail. Two other gringo travellers, a guide, a porter, and myself set off on Friday for a 5 day hike called the "Yunga Cruz" trail, a maddening journey of bliss and exhilaration and cursing and frustration. It was worth the pain, but oh what pain it was.

Two interesting things happened on the first day days: a soccer match, and arsonry.

The first day we arrived in the town of Chunawi, where the locals, upon finding that I spoke Spanish, asked if me and my two fellow trekkers wanted to engage in a game of soccer. I suck royal at soccer, haven't played it since I was about 8 years old. But the British fellow, Richard, of course plays twice a week and jumped at the chance, meaning I had to play. Let me just say that playing 3 on 3 soccer at 12,000 feet is enough to make your lungs jump out of your throat in anguish. Thin air is bad enough while hiking, but while running around a plaza trying to chase down three Bolivian guys who were well suited to the mountains - ouch. This all being said, it was incredible being in a tiny town that never sees tourists, playing soccer with three locals in their tiny plaza (no paved anything here, all dirt paths and the plaza was essentially a nice green grass field).

The second day we set off with a friend of the guide, who lived in Chunawi. His name was Don Angel (who we later found out was 63 years old), and this man loved fire. Probably a pyromaniac according to psychological definition. Upon camping on the second night, our friend Don Angel decided he would start setting fires for fun. So up above our campsite on the hill went our friend, lighting the brush on fire and standing there with a big smile on his wizened old face as the grass crackled and burned a bright orange. Keeping in mind that this week was the week of San Juan (Saint John), and to the Latin and Spanish world San Juan week means fireworks and bonfires and pyres (basically San Juan equals fire), it does make a bit of sense that Mr. Angel was so interested in lighting the landscape ablaze. Our porter, Juan, decided to join in with Don Angel, and after awhile of bemusement on my part I just had to join in.

Being from California, the last thing I would consider doing is going into wild brush and grass and go lighting fires. In my state, that's a great way to start something catastrophic and have your picture end up on the local news. In short, it was a trippy experience as I grabbed some dry brush, lit it up, and proceeded to set afire several tufts of brush around us. Liberating almost. Honestly it was safe enough, as far as arson goes, given the moistness in the air. Down below us, below the mountain range we were hiking through, was the yungas, or the cloud forest. During the day the humid air from the steamy jungle-ish valleys would meet the cool air up in the mountains and produce a hell of a lot of mist around us. Thus we weren't likely to start any sort of dangerous fire, but it was great in that primeval, primitive way to stand back and watch your fires light up the hillside above you.

During the second night as I laid in my sleeping bag my stomach turned from a normal stomach to one of acid and fire. Or, I got a bad stomach ache, one which lasted into the third day. Hiking four hours the next day in a very weakened position (couldn't eat) was not the most pleasurable of experiences, especially with a 25 pound backpack on my back. The scenery, however, was great as we hiked through the Andes to the southeast of La Paz. My stomach rounded into shape by that night, and I finally got some sleep.

For the rest of the story, man versus jungle, tune in tomorrow.

Solo travellers are generally not always the most sane of people to begin with, so I suppose it is somewhat understandable my mindstate yesterday. From September until mid May my brain was being constantly occupied with tasks and things that requires creative thought and output. Things such as my coursework and papers, books, music, my guitar, political conversation. Then I go on vacation. No school. No music. No guitar. Essentially I hit a creative void, where my life is reduced to very enjoyable and tranquil state as I travel, but a state that has more to do with observation of surroundings rather creatively interacting with them.

So my mind yesterday revolted against me, and finally I realized my constant daydreams and the persistent jukebox in my head (everytime a thought that reminds me of a line in a song, well that song just has to be mentally played and maybe hummed aloud and maybe if no one is around I might sing) were telling me something: my head was getting bored. Don't misundertand all of this, the trip so far has been stimulating and interesting and all sorts of good things. But the stimulation of travel differs from the stimulation of using one's imagination to create or interact with something, whether it's making up music on a guitar or writing in this blog (this blog has certainly helped, but I can't and do not want to be in a netcafe everyday).

I was in my hostel and was daydreaming again, lines of a story pulsing through my head as I envisioned a plot about a tortured artist who considered his success his failure. And before I knew it ... out I had to go! I remembered a store I had walked by earlier that had composition notebooks and pens and whatnot. I sped over (not in my usual ramble) and picked up a book and a pen, and went and wrote for an hour and a half in a cafe. Instant relief! Who knows (or cares) if the story goes anywhere, what interests me about the entire episode is the process of self-revelation that continually happens when on the road by oneself.

Despite civil unrest that only ended about 10 days ago, unrest which threatened to send the entire country into an armed conflict, La Paz today seems just like any other major metropolis. Walking about the La Paz now you would never know that tear gas and rubber bullets and dynamite were dominating the cityscape a mere two weeks ago. I arrived last night, and found musicians performing in the main plaza, people bustling all over the place, streets full of businessmen and young kids and food vendors. Since 2000, Bolivia has experienced civil unrest (in the form of strikes, blockades, marches, protests etc) so often that they seem to be experts at returning life back to normal. Unfazed they go back to business, although from the Bolivians I have talked to so far they seem to remain forever uneasy about the future. They would rather concentrate on the now - talking about what may happen transforms them to a weary face and tired eyes.

La Paz itself is an extremely interesting place for its contrasts. The first thing you notice are the juxapositions of the colonial houses nextdoor to modern glass cubes. Then you notice the contrast between all the businessmen walking around in their suits and ties with the indigenous women selling their wares on the streets. La Paz must be an alien place for the majority of Bolivians, given the money that exists here and the poverty that exists most elsewhere. From my perspective, I rather enjoy the irregularity of the city. The hills and windy streets and mismatched architecture make La Paz a very unique city, aside from the obvious points such as its elevation (the highest capital city in the world, at 11,000 feet, and the highest airport in the world at 13,000 feet), and all add up into a package that makes me fond of the place. Not to mention the sheer beauty of the surroundings, with the city sitting in a huge bowl and neighborhoods sprawling high up on the canyon walls (meaning at night, wherever you look you find lights rising hundreds of feet above you), with 21,000 foot Mount Illimani rising in the background

In today's newspaper three statistics caught my eye. First, the government just finished a study on child miners, and calculated there are 15,000 working in Bolivia's mines. Second, last night alone 5 people died in El Alto, the sprawling and poor city above La Paz. They froze to death on the streets, on a night that was not abnormally cold. Meaning this must be a regular occurrence, given the sheer number of people there who sleep on the streets or in ramshackle buildings. Third, from May 2004 to May 2005 there were over 3900 incidents of civil conflicts in Bolivia.

It's one thing to read about these things from the comfort of your home, and it's quite another to witness firsthand the poverty of El Alto as your bus goes through it, or to read accounts in the local paper of the poverty and difficulty so entrenched within the nation. The natural beauty and the sucking poverty (only Haiti is poorer in the Americas) make Bolivia an continually affecting experience.