ruta cuarenta

so i´ve finally made it to the last country on this incredible journey...argentina. but first, i went through a couple more places in bolivia, trying to get all i could out of it before i entered the land of the expensive. tupiza, the wild wild west with an indigenous twist, for horseback-riding and tarija, ¨the most mediterranean of all of the country¨so said the lonely planet, but in all reality it was just a couple of ho-hum plazas and dingy hotels, for a taste of bolivian wine (and let´s just say that got me ruuuuuul excited for the vino in argentina!). i took a night bus down to the border town of villazon (side note: bolivian bus lines always plan their routes so you get in at, you know, between the very reasonable hours of 2-4am. because that´s the exact time i want to get into a new city, with everything i own on my back, running on no sleep, food or energy) and true to form, i arrived at little past three. unsurprisingly, immigration offices weren´t open, so i crashed out for a couple hours on the bus with the drivers and luggage handlers. they were even nice enough to lend me a couple blankets to snuggle up in.

then, i crossed the border, and everything changed. what, roads are paved? there are movies on the bus, and not one, but two!? the seats actually recline? coffee service? why yes, i would LOVE a glass of wine, thank you very much. toto, we are definitely not in kansas--or south america, for that matter--anymore.

it doesn´t have much of an indigenous culture, the spanish accent is nearly impossible to understand, people seem to survive solely on massive amounts of meat, and the prices are absolutely killing my budget, but gosh dang, argentina, i think i love you. i really do. and not just because they serve wine on the buses.

salta, the first town i settled into, reminds me more of spain or italy than peru or ecuador. sprawling plazas lined with palm trees, large avenues, large groups sharing mate, pizzerias on every corner, old men debating politics and lingering over cafe con leches and a sense of sophistication that for the first time makes me feel a bit self-conscious in my flip flops and dirty jean shorts. it´s still latin, but with class.


i promised my mother i wouldn´t hitchhike, and thus was hit with a bit of a dilemma. i had heard about this amazing drive from salta to the small towns of cachi and cafayate, connected by the famous route 40, ruta cuarenta, the longest road in argentina that stretches from bolivia to patagonia, the road taken by che guevara on his infamous trip through the south america. it had to be done. only problem is that there is no public transportation between the two cities. luckily, a swiss guy, martin, from my hostel had his heart set on renting a car, and even though i couldn´t pay (because, if you haven´t noticed, i am cheap cheap cheap), said i could tag along for the ride. road trip!

clear the road! alex is attempting to drive a stick shift!

garganta del diablo (devil´s throat)

the scenery was incredible, and the company wasn´t too bad either. a quirky character, this martin. english wasn´t his first language so we had a couple lost-in-translation issues. especially once i started on the wine (as he was the driver, that meant that i got to taste the vino at all the wineries we stopped at, whee!). communication problems aside, though, we made great road trip buddies.

and my personal favorite, wine-flavored ice cream. though i am a red wine girl through and through, the man in the shop recommended the fruity local torronte. wine and ice cream, together as one, something quite nearly close to perfection.


i learned both how to drive and stick shift AND change a tire, along with being informed of the fun fact that people in switzerland eat horses. you really do learn something new every day.

surrealism: defined

ok, i don´t know if, by definition, you can truly define surrealism, but if the word had a geographic area, it would be represented by southwest bolivia. in particular, the salar de uyuni and surrounding landscape. nothing was normal, nothing made sense, yet everything was perfect in its own incongruous way. it is, in una palabra, surreal.

i arrived in uyuni completely overwhelmed, as the town was infested with tour agencies (and, strangely, italian-pizza restaurants) all hawking the same-sounding 3 day, 2 night tour of the salt flats. true to form, i went with the guys who gave me a veggie discount and threw in a bottle of wine for the last meal.

take a 4WD toyota jeep circa 1981, a motley group of 6 round-the-world travelers, a gold-toothed driver and one feisty cook, shake-don´t stir, and serve on the rocks. throw in around 700 miles of incredible scenery for good measure. bottoms up.

the group

we started out at the train cemetary, which is basically what is sounds like--a graveyard of decomissioned trains rusting in the middle of the uyuni badlands. it had absolutely nothing to do with nature or scenery or salt, for that matter, but it was fun to scramble over old cabooses (caboosi? cabeese? what´s the plural for caboose?) and old train parts for photography´s sake.

then, after some obligatory stops at the artensenal town of colchani, where you could see the world´s biggest llama (made of salt!), buy things like salt dice (or if you´re boring, a bag of bolivian salt--have fun taking THAT through customs!), and see mini-mountains of--you guessed it--salt. and finally, we were off to the main event, the salt flats! the biggest in the world!

salty

bumping across the plains, i had to keep reminding myself that i was on planet earth. the moon, or maybe pluto, but something alien. a trend that would continue throughout the trip. as far as the eye could see, white. looks like snow, but it´s not. it was the dry season, the salt just beginning to crack in large hexagonal shapes, the blinding white a stark contrast to the brillant blue cloudless sky. on and on and on for miles on end. during the rainy seasons, it´s covered in water and creates a perfect, hallugenogenic reflection of the sky above. the world´s biggest mirror. it´s hard to describe--there are only so many ways you can describe white--but take my word for it--surreal.

oh, and you can also take all these crazy photos due to the white background--there´s no sense of perspective on the salt flats because there aren´t any vantage points. so we putzed around for a while, taking photos like this:

i had to throw in some old school cheer moves

and this:

(note: will add photo when i find an internet connection that is NOT dial-up, as is the one i am using now. i could seriously knit an entire family a set of sweaters, or at least some socks, waiting for a page to load, and lord knows i do not have the nimblest of fingers.)

to complete the sodium theme of the day, we stayed the night in a suprisingly comfortable salt hotel. seriously, everything was made of blocks of salt. cool, no? except that now instead of all my things covered in sand, i find myself shaking grains of salt out of my shoes. also, for dinner that night, we had a bolivian specialty, pique lo macho. french fries, onions, tomato, meat, hot dogs, cheese and eggs (and, i´m guessing, a hefty pinch of salt). i kid you not, they love it here.

the next day was spent driving driving driving, off-roading through martian lands, hopping out of the car every 30 minutes or so for photo-ops. it was both burning hot from the sun and freezing cold from the wind--how approriate for this land of contrasts. an aquamarine lagoon, fringed with salt at the base of a volcano at 4200m. a flamingoo breeding ground. mountains painted a muted rainbow of colors, mossy green and clay and dusty violent and ruddy pink and amber red. verdant green mushroom-like plants that looked like they belonged in super mario bros sprounting in the desert. massive rocks twisted and turned and bent into incredible natural formations. a stone tree carved by howling sandy winds. an ancient lake turned vivid red from mineral deposits. and this was all just the second day.

we spent the night at 4300m. it was around -4 degrees celcius, and as we were freezing in our bunker-like accomdations we were all dreaming of our cozy salt hotel the night before. who knew salt blocks would conjure up such warm memories? i didn´t sleep much, somewhat due to the altitude but moreso because of an all-night poker session with some germans from another tour group. that made for a rough awakening at 4:30am, but we had a hour drive ahead of us, racing against time and the moon to catch the sunrise. we stopped at the sol de mañana geyser basin, bubbling sulfur pools and spectular geysters, steaming with volcanic strength. the sun made it´s entrance, striping the indigo sky with brillant strips of red, my view on slightly obscured by gas rising from the earth. this moment felt the most other-wordly. i felt closer to the sun, closer to space, closer to something bigger than myself, than i ever had before--and not just because i was up at 5000m. not that it did anything to warm us up--we all hundled together for body heat, taking refuge behind the jeep for protection against the searing winds.

an early morning dip in thermal hot springs warmed us up, a drive through the panorama that inspired artist salvadore dali´s paintings of multi-colored mountains and rocks left me inspired, and a looooong trip through the badlands brought us back to uyuni--dusty, wind-chapped and brimming with pictures. 3 days, 700 miles, no worse for wear.

truly, some of the oddest, eeriest, exotic, vividly beautiful, most surreal landscape i have ever seen. i promise to post some photos, but it won´t do it justice.

and a man just walked into the internet cafe with a carboard box full of hot salteñas. i love it when snacks come to you, especially when you´ve been attempting to blog for an hour. gracias, señor, don´t mind if i do!

the devil´s miners

(a little out of order...updates on la paz and sucre to come soon!)

in the 16th century, potosi was the richest city in the world, lining it´s streets with the silver extracted from their famous mines. now, far from it´s heyday, nearly all the plata is gone, but men still go deep into the mountains every day, working horrendous conditions for little pay, most dying by the age of 35.

they work 10, 12, 14 sometimes 24 hours a day. the mines never close, the mines never sleep. it´s a cooperative, not privately owned, so the longer the men work, the more money they can make. no regulations, no labor laws, no safety. golf-ball size lumps protrude from each cheek, a wad of coca leaves slowly being chewed. they go through an entire bag, 25 grams, of coca a day, the leaves staving off hunger, bringing energy, lubricating the throat from the dryness of the dust. they don´t eat inside the mines, the toxins will be ingested with the food. children as young as 12 enter the mountain, forgoing school for work. they say they will only work one or two years, most never leave.

labor is hard, dangerous, back-breaking, dragging 2 ton carts through rickety tunnels, blowing up the volcanic rock with sticks of dynamite, shoveling ore, resting only to chew more coca, laugh and talk. it´s like going back in time. medieval times. they say the strongest miner is the one with the best sense of humor. when conditions are that tough, you need to laugh. nearly 8 million have been killed since the mines opened. they call it ¨the mountain that eats men alive.¨

bolivia may be catholic country, but in the depths of cerro rico, they worship their own god, tio, the devil. the mountain is hell. sacrifices of alcohol, cigarettes and llama blood are made, praying for a good vien, praying for safety, praying that tio doesn´t show his anger in an explosion.

ex-miners take travelers down into the working mines, and i went along for the ride. we first visited the miners market to pick up gifts for the workers--bags of coca leaves (which we all began chewing, stuffing wads of coca into the sides of our cheeks like cows chewing cud), soda pop and sticks of dynamite. then, up the mountain we drove and into the mines we went. the dust was thick, the air thin, we are up at 4090m after all, potosi being the highest city in the world. our group scrambled through mine shafts, sometimes crawling on our hands and knees, pressing ourselves against the rocky wall when a cart loaded with ore was pulled by. even though we had scarves to cover our mouths, the altitude made it difficult to breath, so we went without, inhaling the dust as we tried to suck in air. lose lose situation, i guess. eyes watery, throat burning, we pressed on, down the first, the second, the third level. it was an eerie feeling, knowing you are deep inside a mining mountain with only one way out. not for the claustrophobic, not for the faint-hearted. ventilation tubes hissed, wagons rumbled by, but sometimes it was quiet, dark, but not peaceful. as it was a functioning mine, not a closed one, we constantly passed men, some young, some old, 120 men in a single mine, 5000 in the mountain every day. we handed out our gifts, a bag of coca here, a stick of dynamite there, when i ran out i wish i had more to give.

we came out the way we came in, and climbing up the shafts was even harded than sliding down. some tunnels weren´t more than a foot high. head bumping against rafters, hands grasping rock and dust and ore, only light from my headlamp leading the way. a couple of moments, ¨just get me out of here!¨and then, at last, the light--literally--at the end of the tunnel. fresh air never felt so sweet. some men work what´s called la dobla-- a double shift, a 24 hour shift during which they come out once at night for dinner. after 1 hour, i was dying to get out.

our guide fixed us up some dynamite, because who doesn´t like to blow things up for fun? once lit, the bomb was tossed from traveler to traveler, a crazed sort of hot potato, so everyone can get a photo, ¨look mom, live dynamite!¨ the fuse is only a minute long, every second counts. then, he is running, running, running, he buries it, gives it space, just in time as the ground explodes. a mini-mushroom cloud spirals to the sky. power. wow, i HELD that 30 seconds ago?

this was by far one of the more eye-opening experiences of this trip. husbands, sons, uncles, kids, working in some of the most awful conditions i´ve seen. sacrificing their lives for their wives, daughters, aunts, children. fiercely proud, they are family, they are friends, they are miners. this is the real potosi.

location: middle of nowhere, boliva

(excerpt taken out of my journal during a bus ride from la paz to sucre)

from my hilltop vantage point, buses are stretched out in both directions, as far as the eye can see. it´s about 9 am, we left la paz yesterday night at around 7:30 pm and i have no idea when i´ll make it to sucre. the road is blocked, has been since about midnight, by massive boulders pushed into the street by protesting campesinos. no one can pass.

the buses and trucks are virtually abandoned by now, rusty shells of their former lives in the squinting morning light. hundreds of passengers milling around draped in blankets, hundling next to makeshift bonfires, washing clothes (yes, someone decided this was the perfect time to do a bit of river laundry), feeding babies, scrounging the local homes for food, for breakfast, a piece of bread, anything.


it´s cold. although i´m wearing leggings, jeans, wooly alpaca socks, wooly alpaca gloves, a wooly alpaca beanie, two sweaters and a hoodie, the air is frigid and biting, unforgiving. i turn my face toward the rising sun, hoping to will myself to absorb extra warmth from the still-weak rays. horns blare in the distance, a futile and fruitless endeavour, only adding background noise to the chaotic scene developing below. i get comfortable in my hilltop hamlet. we´re in here for the long haul.


i´ve only been in bolivia six days and have already experienced three protest, two of which have directly affected my means of travel. i´d heard that social demonstrations, riots and blockades were a weekly event in this country. for once, the rumors seem to be true.

a dog barks, a rooster crows, where am i? and what possessed me to buy fingerless gloves? writing this is the only way to keep my hands warm, at a normal human temperature. the landscape is barren, seems harsh and unfit for the hordes of people who have unwillingly invaded. what would i give for a hot cup of coffee. another story for the books, i guess.

i´m approached by a couple of indigenous men, bright multi-colored ponchos and smiling toothless grins, disturbing my peaceful alone time but that is ok. in a mix of quecha and spanish, they explain what´s going on--apparently the government promised funds for some sort of land works project and didn´t follow through--and invite me for pan con queso and a fireside spot. the talk is all indigenous, i can´t really understand, but am grateful for the warmth and hospitality.


fireworks set off, car alarms crying, cheers sporadically rise up from the rioters, power to the people?

it´s amazing, the difference between the situation here and what would happen in the states. everyone is so bothered by the slightest delay, the most minor inconvience, a tiny detour in plans. i am not immune to this. but here, you make the best of it. though my bus was filled with elderly and women with fussy babies, i haven´t heard one complaint. maybe they are used to it, yes. most definately. but you would think angelenos would be use to the maddening traffic, and road rage is still a contagious epidemic, isn´t it? i just think it says something about resiliency and character. and although sometimes i let my born-and-bred americanism rear it´s ugly head , i continue to be impressed by the latin attitude. even while sitting stranded on a rocky hilltop, toes numb, rumbly in my tumbly, smack dab in the middle of nowhere. or, is it the center of everthing?

those days

so i booked a direct overnight bus from cuzco to copacabana, bolivia. alex alex alex, you should know by now that direct and bus are oxymorons in latin america. silly girl.


first, it decided to pour rain, and that hostel that we were staying in that gave such magnificent city views posed a slight problem. it was only reachable by steep winding stairs, slippery and difficult normally but a death wish in flip-flops, my two backpacks and torrents of water. needless to say, things did not go well, and i have the bruises to prove it.


then at the bus station, i was told that there was a border strike or my bus had crashed, i wasn´t too sure, but either way, my direct bus was dunzo and everyone had to be redirected. i found myself on a rusty puno-bound bus at 11:30 pm next to a woman and her puking child, was dumped unceremoniously at 4 am at the bus terminal and tried to keep myself from freezing during the 3 hours i had to wait until the borded bus decided to show.


another four hours and then bolivian immigration, oh joy. forking over the $135 for the visa was painful enough, but then they demanded passport photos, itinerary, a letter of welcome (what?!?) and tickets out of the country, of which i had none. after some wheeling and dealing, downright begging, they finally let me in. not the warmest welcome.


icing on the cake? i realized that at some point during all those joyous hours of traveling, some evil-doer nabbed my camera. arghhhhhhhhhhhhh. exhausted, sleep-deprived and just frustrated, i dropped into the nearest hostel in copacabana and was done. just done.


everybody has those days while travelling. the days when you are just tired--tired of living out of a backpack, tired of constantly being misunderstood, tired of nothing ever working as it should, tired of nothing running on time, tired of everyone staring, tired of never knowing what you are eating and then finding two grizzly chicken feet in your soup, tired of ice cold showers in freezing mountain towns, tired of everyone constantly telling you to be careful, tired of being starving and everything being closed because it sunday and this is catholic country. tired of being tired. you have a moment of feeling bad for yourself. you want to go home. but then, you´re in a new town, a new city, a new country, something fun and different and you get to explore and see beautiful things from all corners of the world and lose your center over and over again, and you feel bohemian and free and independent and liberated and really really really lucky. and i think i can live out of this backpack forever. siempre adelante. always onward.

inca cola

as the once-glorious inca capital, cuzco had alot to live up too, and in my eyes it did pretty well. despite being tourist-ready: think gringos on every turn, tour agencies outnumbering the peruvians themselves, indigenous women in full garb--wide colorful skirts, dark plaited braids and bowler hats--posing with alpacas on the street, the city managed to hold on to it´s ancient charm. narrow cobblestone streets wove through the town, slippery stone steps climbing to breath-taking views (literally and otherwise--the altitude strikes again!) of the adobe cityscape and surrounding verdant green hills of the sacred valley.

i was out of commission for the first couple of days, battling a particularly fearsome trifecta of exhaustion from long bumpy bus rides, altitude sickness and a stubborn parasite that just wouldn´t quit. but nothing good old fashioned sleep, copious amounts of mate de coca (coca leaf tea) and 8 cloves of raw garlic couldn´t fix (it´s a natural anti-bacterial, don´t ya know).

mmmm coca

cuzco is a tourist´s dream city, but jeanette and i managed to find a few diamonds in the rough to keep us grounded. dining on three course meals with food that actually has FLAVOR (quite the rare find) for under two bucks, chatting with the market ladies while eating river fish ceviche, chasing with a shot of leche de tigre. by the way, there is no milk or tiger in the leche de tigre, just like there is no cheese in queso helado. it´s actually the marinade from the fish, sometimes mixed with vodka. cheers! i somehow found a way to insult an entire table of locals when i casually commented that, in my humble opinion, i thought arequipeña beer was better than cuzqueña beer (nearly every big city in peru brews their own beer and are fiercely proud of it). once, we got sent a plate of chicharrones--that would be pork deep fried in pig fat, the specialty of the bar we were at, as it was called ¨bar chicharrones.¨only in latin america would guys send you a plate of fried meat as a ¨hey, i´m looking at you¨gesture. ¨dang it, why wasn´t the place called ¨bar pisco sour?¨

aw, you shouldn´t have. no really, you shouldn´t have!

and then there was machu picchu. our trek didn´t work out as planned, so jeanette and i decided to DIY and forge our own way. one microbus, one highjacked tour bus (to clarify, we did the highjacking, not the other way around. you never know) in ollantaytambo, and one severly overpriced train ride brought us to aguas calientas, the town at the base of the ruins. we bypassed the van that shuttles tourists up through the mountain and hoofed it instead--a mini mini mini-me version of the inca trail. steps, steps, steps that i thought would never end straight up the mountainside. as we gained alitude and the thunderous roar of the rushing vilcanota river became more and more faint, the stupifying views were testament to the incredible feat it was to build a mountain-top citadel. go incas. how did they do it?

incredible

and then, there she was, tucked away in the andes, in all her glory. words can´t really express. i was seeing something i´d wanted to see for my whole life, and it was even more __________ (insert adjective here, i´m out of them) that i could have ever expected. magical even. you could practically feel the spirit and energy of the incas. the clouds ebbed and flowed, sometimes shrouding the ruins in wispy capes and sometimes parting so that the sun shined brillantly on the stone. as i was too cheap to get a guide, we followed behind other tours to get snippets of info, but most of my time there was spent wandering aimlessly through the century old ruins, wondering who lived there, what they did, what they were like, where they went. pretty incredible, and probably the best way to end my stint in peru.

a couple of days later, jeanette and i parted ways, her back to canada and me to bolivia, and after a series of somewhat unfortunate events, make it to copacobana on lake titicaca. until next time, amigos!

sunday funday

or: the peruvian pour and the art of drinking.

or: yo no se manana.

or: i fell in love with a country named peru.

all possible names for this post. but i´m sticking with sunday funday because those have been, hands down, my most favorite days ever in peru.

basically, sundays are when all the peruvians let loose. saturday nights are for going out, yes, but sundays are for hanging out all day long. the day for rest, the day for families, the day for friends. most of the time, celebrated by drinking cervezas outside. and this brings in the peruvian pour and the art of drinking, because in this country, it truly is an art and to confess, takes a little bit of time to pick up. but in a nutshell...

no matter how many people, be it 2 or 12, there is always only one beer and one glass at all times. i am handed the beer, i pour myself a small shot-sized glass, i pass the bottle to the next. after tossing back the drink in a couple gulps, proper etiquette is to fling (trust a now-seasoned expert, it´s all in the wrist flick) the backwash of the beer out (on the pavement, in the sand, wherever said sunday funday is occuring) and pass the glass. and so on, ´round the circle it goes. once the bottle runs out, another magically appears. and on sunday funday (or any other day, for that matter), they don´t stop coming. that is the only way to drink as the peruvians do, and it took us a while to get in the loop. in the beginning, we would be invited to a group, only to be given our own glass. ouch, such a peruvian faux paux (but now that i think about it, probably a bit more hygenic, ha). talk about being out of the circle. jeanette and i began to get offended when we would order a drink and the bartender would bring us two glasses. excuse me sir, we´ve been in peru two months now, we know how things go down. one vasito will suffice, thank you very much.

so where have i been since? after huanchinca, we headed to the white city of arequipa. talk about style, this town was class class class. a beautiful plaza de armas, colonial buildings that nearly sparkled in the sun, and the most laid-back market i´ve ever visited, where we would stand and eat the most delicious salteña empanadas with the business men and teenages, fighing over the bowl of chili sauce. the plan was to base here, then head to colca canyon for a couple days trekking into one of the worlds deepest canyon. but when we showed up at the bus terminal, bright and early with all of our packs at 9am, found that the next bus didn´t leave until 3. hemmm what to do, what to do? we remembered an artisan friend told us he was from mollendo, discovered a bus headed there in the next ten minutes, bid a very cold, very deep canyon chau, and headed to the coast.

we were the ony gringas, and that´s the way we liked it. during the weekend, the beach would be flooded with latin tourists--and seriously, NOTHING is more entertaining than latins on holidays-- but on the weekdays quiet and laid-back. people seemed a bit shocked that we hung around as long as we did--even peruvians only stay the weekend, and we kicked it for almost two weeks. by the end, we knew practically everyone in mollendo, or at least, everyone knew us. the guys who worked the beach would get us our umbrella every day, we would share cervezas with the lifeguards (yes, we made friends with latin baywatch) and our new amigo rafael, the old ice-cream man with one tooth would play ¨here comes the bride¨ on his harmonica whenever he say me. the town was so small that when word got around that i looooved the song ÿo no se manaña¨(see below), the guy at our usual tienda presented me with a CD. no, i´d never really talked to him before in my life. i loved it. something about small towns are just so addicting.

after mollendo, a night bus to cuzco, and that is another post for another time.

i´m leaving peru tonight for bolivia, and trying to peg the reasons i love this country so much is like trying to describe why i love indiana jones to those weird people who haven´t watched it 500 times. maybe it´s because i love the song yo no se manana and so does the rest of peru. maybe it´s because all the peruvians give each other nicknames (they called me gatita, little cat, because of my green eyes). maybe it´s because i love the aji sauce, the spicer the better, and every hole-in-the-wall restaurant has their own special blend. maybe it´s because they love love love inca cola here instead of coca cola, despite it´s chemical-yellow color. maybe it´s because this whole country--from broken down buses to cargo boats to sandduning to exploring ancient ruins--has been an adventure. maybe it´s because i finally saw machu picchu. maybe it´s because each city, each village, each town, is so unique--from chaotic iquitios to chilled out huanchaco--yet so distinctly peruvian at the same time. maybe it´s because this is the first country where i´ve really gotten to know locals. maybe it´s because i just fell in love--with the people, the places, the smells, the music, the food, the slang, the driving, the attitude, the confidence, the shyness, the openess, the history, the mystery, the very essence of this country.