Sunday, May 30, 2010

Lago Titicaca

We've just spent two weeks in the jungle, in Bolivia's Amazon basin. One, floating down the Mamore River near the town of Trinidad. The next, near Rurrenabaque, visiting Madidi National Park on the Beni River and an indigenous community there named San Miguel del Bala. The community decided to develop an eco-lodge after the park was created in 1996 and they were no longer allowed to fish or log commercially. But, we are overwhelmed by the photos to sort through and the stories to tell, so that blog will have to wait. My own perfectionist tendency means that we will have a jungle post, later.

But for now, we are winding our trip to a close. We have two nights left in South America. But, from here on out we are en route -- to La Paz today, to Santiago tomorrow, and then to Arizona and a mini-road trip back home from Rebecca's parents house.

We thought long and hard about where we wanted to spend our last days of this adventure. Our original plan had been to spend them on the beaches of Ecuador. But, Argentina and Bolivia captivated us and we never made it to Ecuador. Someplace beautiful was our main criteria. Also, someplace with good food and hot showers. We are ready to re-embrace our creature comforts.

We settled on Lake Titicaca. We are in the town of Copacabana on the Bolivian side of the Lake that borders Peru, 3.5 hours away from La Paz, in the Andes at 12,500 feet, on one of the biggest lakes in South America. They claim it is the biggest lake in South America "by water volume" but that's just about as dumb as Hawaii's claim that Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain in the world ... when measured from the sea floor. But it is vast. I'm staring out on it right now and it looks like it must go on forever. It's 122 miles long and 35 miles wide, on average. It's actually two nearly separate lakes (upper and lower Lake Titicaca), connected by a very narrow straight.

Coming from La Paz, you must cross the Straight of Tiquina by boat. We were expecting some kind of ferry, but instead there are a hundred single car/bus/truck boat taxis. As you pull up to the edge, you drive onto a rather small, flatbed boat. Using long poles, the driver maneuvers the boat around to the other direction (the motor is on one side only) and off you go.


We intended to leave Rurrenabaque last week Sunday and have a full week here, but we ended up getting stuck in the town because of rain. They have only a dirt and grass runaway, so a full 24 hours of no rain must pass before planes can take-off and land.

(The Rurrenabaque airport. In one of the tiniest plane I have ever ridden in - 18 passengers. No door to the cockpit.)

When we finally made it out of Rurrenabaque on Wednesday, we decided to come straight up to Lake Titicaca from the La Paz airport. We also decided to spend our last nights here in style in a fancy hotel with a view of the lake from our bed!

(Sunset from our hotel room.)

(Two very relaxed travellers.)

(The town of Copacabana.)

(The traditional style of boat, made out of the reeds that grow around the lake. Now only used for tourists, since wood boats are far more practical for locals.)








(Inca ruins on Isla del Sol - island of the sun. In the early 1990s, a mysterious ancient village was discovered 25 feet under water, just off of Isla del Sol.)

(Little girl from the village of Challampapa on Isla del Sol.)



(Villagers unload supplies at the southern end of Isla del Sol.)

(Three girls in shiny pink skirts watch as villagers unload supplies at Isla del Sol.)

(Woman with stubborn donkey on Isla del Sol.)

(The slightly chaotic beach in the pueblo of Yumani on Isla del Sol. Supplies being unloaded, donkeys being corraled, tour boats arriving and departing.)


Lake Titicaca is magical. We hope to come here again and spend more time camping on the islands, exploring the thousands of different archeological sites, and soaking up the incredible beauty. In the mean time, we're heading back home truly happy though with a little sad mixed in over having this trip come to an end, calm with a little bit of anxiety about the major changes underfoot in our lives when we get home, and incredibly excited to see all of our friends and family and meet our nephew Augie who who was born in February.



-- Blake and Rebecca.

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Monday, May 24, 2010

Potolo and Maragua

Three weeks of language school down. Rebecca has been denying her special gift for languages but the official tally is in. On the final day of classes we received certificates noting the level that we had each attained. It should be noted that Rebecca never studied spanish in school. She took 3 days of spanish in Guatamala once, and a week in Mexico on another occasion (and let´s not forget her 3 days in Valparaiso earlier this trip). I studied spanish for two years in high school and another two intensive semesters in college (though over 14 year ago). Our scores: Advanced Intermediate (me) and Advanced 1 (Rebecca). Apparently she obsessively translates everything she´s thinking into spanish and can't help doing it. While I can be obsessive in other ways, this, unfortunately, is not one of them.

The official "studying spanish" portion of our trip is now done and I'm feeling simultaneously relieved and a little bummed. We're both the closest we've ever been to any level of fluency in any other language (despite the many years of french that we both took) and we can tell that if we just had a few months longer to focus on our spanish we would really be able to get to whole new levels. Oh well.

But we are continuing to discover things about the spanish language that we love. Number one on the list: the use of dimunitives. I never understood spanish well enough to fully comprehend the many many different ways that dimunitives are used to express any number of ideas. In spanish, you can simply add "-ito" or "-ita" to the end of words (ie: "burro" = donkey ... "burrito", or, "chica" = girl ... "chiquita" (the "c" turns into a "qu" for phoenetic purposes). A young woman from Denmark at our school couldn't figure out why people kept talking about bananas -- until she suddenly realized that the word had another context.

We have been amassing a list of some of our favorite diminuatives, that have no direct english translation. They are used in every conversation here. Here are just a few of 'em.

  • Bolivianito (Boliviano) -- as in "you owe me four more 'Bolivianitos'" -- to politely let someone know they are short a few coins

  • esquinita (esquina = corner) -- as in "turn right at the 'esqunita'" -- meaning turn right at the corner right here nearest to us

  • burrito (burro = donkey) -- as when we overheard a police officer in a small pueblo politely ask a woman to please get her "burrito" out of the main square
  • lejitos (lejos = far away) -- as in "the river is 'lejitos' from the restaurant -- meaning the river is just a little far away, but not too far

  • permissito (permisso) -- permisso is what people say when they are trying to walk around you (like "excuse me"), permissito is a little more of an even friendly way to say it

So, after wrapping up at spanish school, we decided to spend one last week exploring the area around Sucre before heading out to other parts. With bags packed and full of excitement for another little adventure, we headed out to find a travel agency to buy our tickets to La Paz the following Sunday. But, with the May 1st holiday everything was closed. So we waited until Monday, spent the morning at the travel agency where our host mom Nancy works buying all of our remaining plane tickets, and then we were off!

We decided to take a cab since it was already after noon and we had a 3 to 4 hour drive ahead of us. After swinging by the cab driver's house for an hour to replace two of his balding tires and pick up his snacks for the road we headed out! As we started up the dirt road settling into a long ride, we stumbled upon a road block. Apparently road work was happening and the road wouldn't open until 6pm. We didn't want to arrive at night, since it wasn't possible to make advanced reservations. But no problem! We´d just start backwards with the last town we´d planned on visiting (Quila Quila) and then end with the first (Potolo).


And so after 4 hours of driving through dirt roads, getting bad directions from people we passed, and finally ending up at a shallow river that might have accomodated a camioneta (passenger truck) but not our little cab, we collectively decided to call it a day. Our cab driver dropped us off, I paid him our agreed on price (he had tried VERY hard to get us where we wanted to go), and we used the occasion to eat one more time in our favorite restaurant in Sucre.

The next morning, we were off! Now down the 200 Bolivianos for the cab ride to nowhere, we decided that taking the bus was prudent. We got to the station 45 minute before the bus left ... but it was already full! As we started our walk over to the camioneta (truck) area, we took some amount of pleasure in watching a 20-something American guy try to bribe his way onto the bus (and thus trying to kick off paying Bolivians who had gotten there earlier than he and his friends.) He handed a large bill to the woman and said it was for the four of them. She kept the bill and said it was for one of them. He was then left desperately trying to get his bill back. Ha.

And so squeezed into the crowded camioneta, we settled into to our long drive. We watched, a little fascinated, as people pulled out their snacks of whole boiled potatoes eaten like apples, hard boiled eggs, and mote (cooked whole hominy kernals). And we got hungry. As Rebecca pulled out her little fork-spoon-knife camping set, opened our jar of peanut butter, and began spreading it onto bread, she had a funny feeling for a moment. She looked up and saw literally all eyes turned to her, fascinated by our strange eating habits.

When we hit the familiar road block, we stopped in a long line of camionetas all waiting to get through. It was 9:30am and they would be opening up the road at noon while the workers were breaking for lunch. And thus, at noon, we were truly off! With four nights now, instead of the six we had planned, we decided to head to the pueblo of Potolo for two nights and then to the even smaller pueblo of Maragua for the second two.


We finally arrived in the pueblo of Potolo 65 kilometer from Sucre. We decided on Poloto and Maragua in part because each town had chosen several years ago to build cabañas to house visitors, with the help of several international NGOs. There are no shortage of tour agencies in Sucre, and the vast majority give very little, if anything at all, back to the communities they visit on their tours. They have their own sleeping cabins, they bring in guides from elsewhere, and they see it as "involving" the community to allow people to sell their crafts to their tourists or sometimes to make food for specific meals at cut-rate prices.

These community-based tourism initiatives are meant to help communities benefit directly from tourism and to gain a little more control over its influence on their communities. A lot of variables are at play in determining whether these types of community-based tourism initiatives are successful. We've ended up staying in three different communities in this way while in Bolivia and it has been beautiful, interesting, and given us a lot of food for thought.

(Potolo is full of wheatfields, cornstalks, cows, donkeys, and adobe brick huts. There is a plaza in the center of town, where camionetas stop on their way through. It is bordered by 5 or 6 small kiosks that sell basic goods like toilet paper, mandarin oranges, bananas, liquor, and crackers.)



We hopped off the truck and looked around to figure out what to do next. We knew (or hoped) that the cabañas existed and were still in use. We wandered over to one of the small kiosk booths and asked the proprietess who we should talk to about staying in the cabañas for the night. Pablo Contreras she said and directed us to turn left at the esquinita (the nearest corner) and look for the little store. We wandered down the block and saw what seemed perhaps like a little store, or maybe just someone's house. It can be hard to tell here at times, as small stores are simply run out of front rooms of houses. After asking several kids, who then talked to some older kids, who then went and talked to some adults, we were told that one of the younger girls would show us the way to find him.

In Potola and Maragua, the people in the pueblos run the cabañas collectively and trade off who manages them every three or four months. So the system is a little loose at the edges, but everyone seems to know who's turn it is.

When we finally encountered Pablo, he turned out to be a very mature 8 or 9 year old boy and we were feeling a little confused but decided to go with the flow. He brought us our keys, opened up our cabaña, instructed us on how to lock the gate and doors, told us it was 60 Bolivianos per person per night, accepted our money for two nights, and said he'd look into who could cook us dinner that evening. (Although, he later told us that no one wanted to cook dinner that night, and sent us to eat at the little pension in the center of town.)

(Rebecca standing in front of our door.)


The cabañas were beautiful, stone and adobe buildings set around a little courtyard. We were highly impressed. They had working electricity and plumbing, were clean and cozy, and the outside courtyard area was a great place to hang out. They were all behind big metal gates and had grates on the windows, making them feel a little compound-like amid the adobe houses that surrounded them.

(The courtyard surrounded by the cabañas.)


Potolo as a town is picturesque. Located along a river and flanked by beauful mountains that hold layers of rocks full of green and purple hues mixed in with deep red rock. Toward one side of town, the red rock has been ground down to a course sand that has turned into great dunes.

(The old church sits picturesquely atop the hill above the river. A new church has been built closer to town, but this one is still used for special occasions.)



Standing next to the church you can look down onto the amazing multicolor river basin. The following day we took a full day hike upriver (in the opposite direction of the photo below), along the green grassy banks, dipping our feet into the crystal clear water, and eating our lunch in the sun.

(The view from the church. Note me in grey. We felt really small in this grand setting.)


(On our last morning in town we woke up before dawn so that Rebecca could get some photos in the beautiful morning light. It was FREEZING cold.)


(View of the rolling red dunes at the edge of town in the morning light.)


(Rebecca and red dunes.)


(Donkey and Bull hanging out. This bull reminds me of Ferdinand, one of my favorite children's books of all time.)


(From the original book by Munro Leaf.)


"Once upon a time in Spain there was a little bull and his name was Ferdinand. All the other little bulls he lived with would run and jump and butt their heads together, but not Ferdinand. He liked to sit just quietly and smell the flowers. He had a favorite spot out in the pasture under a cork tree. It was his favorite tree and he would sit in its shade all day and smell the flowers."


Animals were everywhere you turned. Chickens, donkeys, bulls and cows, pigs, sheep, goats, and dogs. Sitting on rooftops, playing in the streets and paths, pulling loads of hay or sticks in the fields, and sitting in their adobe pens at the end of the day.

(Mama and her puppy roughhousing.)


On our last morning we met Pablo Contreras, Sr. -- the actual manager of the cabañas -- who told us it was his son we had met the other day. He took our names and keys, and had us fill out evaluation forms. When we told him we were heading to Maragua and were hoping to catch a camioneta, he told us that no camionetas were going to Maragua that day. We asked if perhaps there was someone in town who would want to be our guide for the day on a hike through the mountains. He said he'd ask around and, if no one else could do it, he would. When I asked how much he would charge, he said 50 or 60 Bolivianos, which seemed way too little. I suggested, "how about 70" and we had a deal. And so off we went on a stunning hike directly through the mountains out to Maragua.


We wore hiking boots and state-of-the-art backpacks. He wore thin leather sandals and a blanket for carrying items. He didn´t carry any water or food! Luckily we packed about 4 liters of water and plenty of snacks for all of us, because the day turned out to be hot.

People in the region really did not like to have their picture taken. Even as bystanders near a really good view. So we didn't take many photos of people during our weekend, but I did snap this one of Rebecca and Pablo walking down the trail. Pablo, like many men in this area, members of the Jal'qa Quechua-speaking indigenous community, wears a traditional kind of pants that cinch below the butt and then a long shirt tucked into them.


The hike he took us through was stunning. We wound through the hills and mountains and passed by a number of remote, tiny villages.


Five hours later, we crossed over one last hill and saw the Maragua crater -- which is actually not a crater (volcanic nor meteor, according to a geology listserve I found). It is a strange and beautiful techtonic structure, rich in copper and iron deposits that cause the striking green and red colors in the rocks.

(The red adobe buildings that make up Maragua can be seen camoflaged in the left half of the red stripe of land in the middle of this photo.)

(Maragua's cabañas.)

(Our home for the next two days.)


(The crater at night.)


Maragua has had its cabañas for several years longer than Potolo, however the electricity appears to never have been fully hooked up. But, a nice woman came every evening and every morning to make dinner and breakfast for us, included in the price.

(Rebecca sipping on delicious homemade soup.)


Her food was incredibly delicious. The only problem was that she made very little of it. People from this region live on arid land that can not support of large variety of crops. They eat less, and skip meals, and chew coca leaves like chewing tobacco -- constantly throughout the day.

The effects of chewing unprocessed coca leaves resembles a warming pleasurable cup of coffee and is nothing like highly highly processed cocaine. But it does dull people's sense of hunger and allow them to work long hard days. -- Or so we've heard. Neither of us has actually tried chewing coca leaves because it looks kinda gross and we've heard that it numbs your lips and cheeks a little like novacaine (or kava kava) which seems rather unpleasant. And you have to chew it with a little bit of baking soda to draw out the chemicals which also sounds less than inviting. We have enjoyed coca tea, though, which is soothing tasting, helps with altitude sickness and upset stomaches, and is like drinking any ever so slightly caffeinated tea.

We guessed that she probably couldn't really imagine people eating the kinds of meals that we were used to eating after a long day of backpacking. And, though I spent our time in Maragua with a mild case of food panic worried that I would not get enough to eat, we managed to make up the calories with little packets of oreo cookies that they sold at the tiny and only "grocery" store that sold beer, puffed hominy corn, oreos (some days) and crackers.

On our last evening, as we packed our backpacks for a 4 or 5 hour hike back out of Maragua, we asked if she might be able to make a little extra food in the morning and she said that would be fine. The following morning she brought us our regular thermos of hot water and apologized that there was not breakfast food for the morning. Now we were in full food panic. And we didn't have any oreos left.

No food?!?!?!? No, she said, the food for the cabañas is in a locked room and she didn't have the key. We pleaded that if there was any way we could scrape something together we would really appreciate it. She came back empty handed, but we had noticed a small bucket full of potatoes in the cabaña's group kitchen and we asked if perhaps she could make us fried potatoes, like we'd had with dinner the evening before. "Fried potatoes for breakfast?", she asked. Yes please. And so she kindly made us some fried potatoes. We also decided to ask a neighbor if they might sell us some eggs.

And so Rebecca walked over to a neighbors house where there were a number of chickens running around. "Could we possibly buy a few eggs from you," she asked politely to a very very old woman who simply looked at her quizzically. She only spoke Quechua. So Rebecca found another person walking down a path near by and asked how to say "eggs" in Quechua. And so, on try #2, Rebecca less gracefully asked,"Eggs, eggs?" and held out a 5-Boliviano coin. Ohhhhhhhh. And so the old woman showed Rebecca where the chicken roosts were and motioned for her to climb up the ladder and take them. She had to get over a small fear of being pecked for stealing their babies, but easily took two nice, very warm, very fresh eggs. Yummmm.

The experience of living in a town, even just for a few days, where neither access to nor an abundance of food can be taken for granted was powerful and gave us a deeper understanding of the complicated economic and political reality in Bolivia.

(Supplementing dinner with chocolate.)


Our first morning in Maragua, I woke up to discover that I had left my coffee filter AND coffee mug drying in the sun in Potolo. And so I was left to improvise.

(Tupperware and -- fortunately -- clean sock on loan from Rebecca did the trick.)


The crater of Maragua is beautiful. It is shaped like a flower petal with round folds of green copper rich rock surrounding a deep red iron-rich center.

(Satellite view. Not our photo ... obviously.)


(Side view of one of the folds.)


One of the amazing features of the area are easily viewed large dinosaur footprints preserved in the rock. We decided to forego the 5-7 hour roundtrip hike to go see some, but it was still very cool imagining dinosaurs tromping through the landscape.


The footprints are also the inspiration for several dino-phones sprinkled throughout the northern part of Sucre, as well as all kinds of dino-memorabilia, dino-print viewing tours, and a generalized pride in all things dinosaur.

But, back to Maragua...

(Soccer field.)


On our layover day, we took a 2 or 3 kilometer hike to the other pueblo in the crater, Irupampa. Along the way we discovered a huge waterful flowing directly from the town, down the shear cliffs, to the valley below the crater.


We hiked down and saw that the waterfall turned into a series of pools that cascaded down the more gentle slope to the valley floor, and eventually a big river.

(Wild calla lillies lined the path down to the waterfall's pools.)


Both Maragua and Irupampa were beautiful little pueblos. We spend the rest of our day wandering through the towns and taking in the sights.

(Scenic church in Maragua.)


(Inside the church.)


(Irupampa's more modest church.)


(A feature of every adobe household here in Irupampa, and all of the region is the adobe oven. Literally every house has one and it is where they do all of their cooking.)


(Bull in a stone pen.)


(Tiny tiny baby lamb -- he could barely even walk on his shaky little legs. Probably born within the past 2 days.)


(A family taking their sheep and goats to pasture.)


Finally it was time to begin our big hike out. We were heading to Chaunaca, another small pueblo that is located on the main route from Sucre to Potolo where we figured we could catch a camioneta back to Sucre. A beautiful river runs right by town.

(Waiting for a ride back to Sucre. It took a couple of hours, but a camioneta came. The ride back, though frigidly cold, was stunning, and it was the friendliest camioneta ride we experienced. When a 20-or-so month old girl on the truck became infatuated with me and kept sidling up to me and calling me "papa", the ice was officialy broken.)


Back in Sucre, we spent one last night at Nancy's house. The following day, her mom ("Abuela"), her sisters, and all their families were having a big fish BBQ in the patio.

(Abuela and Nancy BBQ the fish.)


(My fish.)


(Rebecca going to town on her fish.)


And with a great big send off and lots of hugs and good-byes, we hopped in a cab for the airport. Next stop is La Paz, to store some of our ever-growing luggage and then head out to the Amazon basin in Trinidad and Rurrenabaque.

(La Paz at sundown. The city sits right atop the Andes at about 10,500 feet.)


(View out of our hotel room window onto the city.)


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