Tarija

After our two plus memorable months in Sucre, we headed on down further south to Tarija. We arrived early in the morning, arrived at the central plaza and with the advice from a local police officer, headed toward the central market for breakfast. Little did we know, that buy stepping into the breakfast area of the market we would also be stepping in to an addiction. For pastelles and sopapillas. They are nothing but deep-fried dough, one filled with cheese, the other just straight up deepfried.  Doesn´t sound special, but our unquenchable desire to consume them was. Fortunately we curbed back after a week bender, and continued onto a more healthy, routine breakfast diet.  Also what was noticable from the start, was how nice the citizens of Tarija were. Immediately upon sitting down with our first plate of pastelles and coffee, where we approached buy a couple who worked around the area, and they offered us any help they could, and from there it was just a taste of things to come, as everyone we came into contact with greeted you with a smile and sincere questions.  The hospitality of the people of Tarija will always be looked back upon as one of the highlights of our trip. One of the low points of our trip was the hostal we stayed at there, which was very unclean and underconstruction, but hey what the heck, we´re in Bolivia after all.  We stayed there two nights, and then after contacting our volunteer host, we headed a bit out of town to a little hostal ¨La Tribu¨ where we could camp in the yard at a lower cost.  We stayed there almost a week, and met many great people.  The place seemed to be a gathering point for vagabonding Argentines and they slowly taught us some artesenia weavings which kept us preoccupied while we waited for our volunteering to start.  El Jardin Saborati is where our volunteering to place, an urban organic garen run by Mauricio Chavez, who provided us with a place to sleep and breakfast in exchange for four hours of work, five days a week.  At first the work took a bit getting used to as we had been spending the last month and a half hiking nearly four days a week, and now were basically just stooped over in a lawn pulling out weeds. And my oh my were there weeds.  The actual area in Mauricios inclosed urban garden that was dedicated to growing plants was about 1/5th of the total area. The other 4/5th´s, weeds knee high. It took us the first week to pull the weeds, and sift the soil, but after that first week, we acclimated pretty well to our new enviroment, and then really were able to have some fun, planting and learning and expermementing with recipies of both Mauricio and our own. More to come later.....

Sucre in a nutshell

Geez, SOMEONE, cough cough, (can you guess who?) did not do so well with the last post, didn`t even finish the first trek!  Anyhow, more than a month this time, record for the longest period of time without a post :( Two weeks until we are back in the states and less than halfway through the trip, we need to get blogging!
The first trek was just that, the first of many, though not at first.  When we first got to Sucre there were about 12 volunteers, all gringos (New Zealand, Australia, Britain, France, Switzerland, Spain, and fellow USAers) and it was a zoo!  With so many of us, there was little organization, and not enough to do.  For each trek, the volunteers prepare all of the meals and the packs the night before.  Most "prep nights" in the beginning went until about 1am with a few people in the kitchen cooking stir fry and making pasta sauce, maybe one person in the other room putting the pack together, and about six people sitting around the dining room table very slowly chopping vegetables while very quickly drinking their beer, wine, whisky, etc.  You can see why the preps went so late into the night! For the volunteer that was accompanying the guide at 5am the next morning to help carry the packs on the trek, it was a rough night and morning!  With so many of us, after our first trek, it was not "our turn" to go on another trek for two more weeks.  That left us pretty bored in Sucre, and we found Sucre is not the best town to be bored in.  Upon arrival, we were both sick (aka, stomachs never happy) for a good part of the time we were in Sucre (2 and a half months!).  We also found that local Sucreños are not the most warm and friendly people in Bolivia.  Perhaps they are not happy that there are so many gringos in their town, I dont know.  It is also a very congested city with narrow sidewalks and people walk SLOW.  There are also no public bathrooms so pretty much everyone pees right out on the street leaving a foul smell of urine in the air.  These may sound like minor things, I realize, but when you have little to do but focus on the negative, they add up!  We were also not accustomed to spending 24/7 together.  With boredom, that was not a good combination.  We would basically take turns being negative and started to drive each other crazy.  After one month in Sucre, around Christmas, we reached our boiling point.  Both of us were talking to our parents, not sure if we wanted to continue with the trip.  We had a few good long conversations with each other as well and with patience and a renewed effort to be positive and work on a few things, we decided to persevere. 
After Christmas, over half of the volunteers moved on with their travels.  That left us with six of us, another American couple (Mark and Jen), an American girl (Elsa), and Patrick (from New Zealand).  We had a VERY memorable New Years which included a dinner party at Randall`s friends house, good food, huge fireworks that we shot off, and afterwards, live music, fireworks and dancing in the central plaza until 3am! I wont soon forget dancing and realizing that we were quite the spectacle for the Bolivians.  None of them were dancing, just surrounding our circle and staring at us! 
Anyhow, the next month in Sucre was markedly better than the first.  With just six of us, we were quite busy and able to go on one to two treks a week.  With an average of three to four days of intense hiking each week, that also meant that we were in great shape!  I must say that the six of us were much more organized, Jen in particular, as well.  A clean kitchen and all spice jars correctly labeled are thanks to her.  Working together so much, we also got to know each other very well.  Almost too well, in fact.  By mid January we were partying pretty frequently and peaked one Sunday afternoon at a local soccer game.  This was a family affair and Nick was falling into the crowd, Elsa, Jen and I were doing inappropriate things with a sucker, and Mark probably should have been kept away from all ladies that were not his girlfriend, Jen.   By 6pm, Nick was passed out on the steps of the volunteer house (he erased the photo from my camera of course) and Jen was gone to the world as well, but not before getting sick.  That left Elsa and I, the most sober to clean up the mess!  You would think lessons would have been learned, but Nick and Mark just took off from there and got a bit out of control (which even Nick admits to now).  Fortunately after a week of that, they came to and got a bit more respectable.  Sucre was great for a good many lessons!  Our time in Sucre wrapped up with Agelen`s, (Lidia, the receptionist of CondorTrekkers, her daughter) 7th birthday!  I baked a pink cake, the office was thoroughly decorated, including a great sign made by Nick, a bike was mutually purchased and we surprised her!  She was so happy and so so thankful too, she is one of the sweetest kids we`ve met and it was so fun to see her trying out her new bike and reading her cards.   The last couple days were spent going to our favorite restaurants (Lupita`s, a "Mexican" place, and Napoli`s, where we always got calzones) and continuing with the volunteer work.  We had one last short trek, which topped them all as the worst (think 5 horrible complaining Frenchies, getting lost due to poor guiding, and me puking over the side of the passenger (livestock) truck on the way back!) Memorable, to say the least.  And then, first of February, we were off to our next adventure, wwoofing (organic farming) in Tarija, Bolivia`s wine country!

First Trek

So like we said, it didn´t take us long to get set up with our first trek. A three day venture through the crater of Maragua, just a short distance outside of Sucre.  Our trek consisted of the two of us, along with our guide for the trek, Lisa, a fellow volunteer from England, and the ´Romanian Couple´.  It was a really good trek to get our feet wet with, and we had a great time with everyone we went with.  The Romanian couple we´re really enjoying themselves, we´re talking to the locals, taking massive amounts a pictures, and stopping to inspect every leaf or bush we came across.  Even at the time I had a sense they we´re the slowest hikers ever,  and after our nine full weeks with CT, the most absolutely were, some people move so slow that it´s literally unfathomable how they make it anywhere.  It was almost they had supernatural abilities, that´s how slow they were, and despite how much they stopped for pics, etc, and for breaks, it still didn´t explain just how they were able to achieve such a slow walk.  Anywho, aside from that it was really great first experience with CT.  We struck out on the first day of the trek at roughly 9AM and took a camion, which is pretty much just an animal trailer filled with locals, and whatever they have with them, out to the Virgen de Chataquilla.  This was a small church really just in the middle of nowhere, but had an interesting myth behind it´s naming.  The story goes that one of the builders of the church was a non-believer, and one day while taking a break a boulder fell just inches from where he was sitting, cracked open, and revealed the image of the Virgin.  He man thought nothing of it, just coincidence, at went to bed that night, tormented by visions of what had occurred earlier that day.  We woke up, and still though, there was no significance in any of it.  He returned to work the next day, and again while on his break another boulder crashes just inches from where he sitting, and reveals the image of the Virgin.  Still he is not convinced, just coincedence he believes, even after the visions haughnt him another night.  Yet still a non-believer, he returns to work and for the third day in a row, while lying down, a boulder comes chrashing down. Only this time it lands on him and breaks his leg, finally convincing him, that it´s perhaps more than just coincidence.  And apparently that is how the Church got its name.  From there the trek begins, which takes us down the Inca trail, which technically is just a pre-columbian trail as it can´t be confirmed that it was actually used by the Incas themselves.  Down the trail leads you to a valley, and village Chaunaka, where we spent our first night in a cute little community hostel.  It was a bit of a hassle just to get into our beds that night, as the family who holds onto the keys for the community hostel also try to rent rooms for the night out of their own house, and tells us they dont have keys to the hostel. This of course is all b.s. and we wait a few hours and finally a women comes down to give us the keys.  Then we ask for the mattresses that are supposed to be in the hostel as well, and she tells us that dont have any.  Again a few hours pass and then she tells us that she does in fact have a couple mattresses, I walk up to the house to grab, and find that of course she has a few, in fact, a whole room full of them.  But what can you do, you can´t blame them too much for trying to make a buck, which everyone for the most part is trying to do in Bolivia.  The next morning we wake up and head out along a trail that follows the riverbed, which at this point, barely had any water in it, but that changed in the following weeks, and it was quite an experience just to see the changes in the landscape over our two months trekking in the area.

And we made it to Sucre...

But not without a little drama.  After another overnight bus, we reached Sucre early in the morning.  The outskirts of the city look like an earthquake hit and is mostly a shanty town.  Having heard that Sucre is supposed to be the most beautiful city in Bolivia, we were pretty disappointed and actually hoping at first that we weren`t actually yet in Sucre.  But we were.  Apparently the beatiful city with whitewashed buildings just means a 5 square block radius of the city, probably 1/20th of the size of the city, has pretty buildings that are by law, white.   We got off the bus and were feeling pretty groggy as we waited for them to take our backpacks out from the compartment underneath the bus.  When Nick got his, he realized that the back of it was soaking wet and it was pretty clear from the smell that it was not water, but urine that was covering his entire bag.  Needless to say he was disgusted and we were both furious.  Upon asking the bus worker what that was about, he said no, nothing spilled back there.  Again frustrating as it was pretty obvious something leaked or someone pissed right on his bag.  We found out later that sometimes people sneak into the luggage compartment for a free ride and perhaps the gringo bag was an appealing target?  Who knows, we could speculate forever.  Anyhow, we caught a taxi and found a hostal to crash for a few days.  We figured we would inquire with CondorTrekkers, whom we planned on volunteering with, as to places we may be able to stay for the next two months.  Nick was, for good reason, in a foul mood and happy to find cable TV in the hostal room. What a luxury!  Fortunately there were big sinks for washing and we were able to soak the bag, and sadly, his sleeping bag too, in soap and water.  On top of all that, Nick got super sick that night and was in bed the entire day following (we did not realize at that point that we would pretty much be a little sick the entire two months we were in Sucre!!!).  Not a good start to the "white city!"  We checked in with CondorTrekkers and by all appearances, seemed to be a pretty chill place.  The guy who started it, Randall, was currently back in his home country of Australia and the place was being run more or less by another volunteer, Patrick, who had already been there for six months.  Patrick showed us around all of the hostals with us inquiring at each how much it would cost to live their long term.  We finally decided on a guest house, Villa de la Plata, which had a little studio apartment with a kitchen and private bathroom.  We were hesitant about paying $200 total for a month which after thinking about it seemed ridiculous considering we paid 1500 a month in San Francisco!  We were happy to put our bags down and settle in for a while after having moved around so much the last few weeks.  Just a day after we "moved in" we were informed that our first trek was set up for the next day and the clients were a couple from Romania.  This would be the first of many treks for both of us and the start of a great learning opportunity!  More to come on our treks and what CondorTrekkers is all about in our next post!

La Paz, Bolivia

Alright everyone, we´re starting to really rev things up here. Two days, two blog posts, which is an increase in production beyond calculation! Boom! In a pocket we find a wee bit torn 20 US dollar bill that would not be exchanged in Peru, and then find a woman upon our return from Isla Del Sol who is willing to make the trade.  Through this transaction we find ourselves with the means necessary to buy a ticket for transport from Copacabana to the capital city of Bolivia, La Paz.  Unfortunately we don´t quite get the clearest explanation on just which bus to take, but we have our ticket and after an hour of frantically running around in search of buses to La Paz, we find (appartently, though still not sure it was) our correct bus.  The ride was not comfortable, but this is south america we´re in and by now we´ve becomed acustomed to this, still bitched a little though.  So after a relatively short bus ride, we arrive in La Paz, and the bus begins its gradual decent down in to the bowl that is the city.  We get to and out of the terminal fairly quickly, hop in a taxi real quick like, and get dropped off in a area that ,we are told by our guide book, has plenty of options for a cheap nights rest. We get out and realize that it fairly late and we begin to worry if we´ll be able to find a place.  We immediately start a search of the area, and though there are many hotels, and hostels, many have closed or are a bit beyond what we´re willing to pay.  We are cheap asses after all.  We findly find an open hostel that has shared dormotories at a price we feel good about, the kid at reception (after putting away his box cutter he was strangley toying with upon our arrival) takes us up for a look at where we could be staying.  We walk in see that there are four beds, all with various backpacks and random shit thrown about them and at the very far end a really sad half caved in bed to the far end of the room.  Then we turn around, and randomly there are four machetes lying on the floor, and at that moment we get a sense that perhaps this was not the best place to find a quiet nights sleep, maybe one that lasts for eternity, but not one we would arise from refreshed in the morning.  So we hightail it out of there, and by now time is really against us, so we head into the first open hotel we can find and pay the most we´ve yet to pay for a night, but we get to our room and it´s a private room, no one to share with, or to butcher us with machetes in the night.  Plus we have a hot shower and television! Cable no less, it seems quite a luxury, and after a few weeks without much laying eyes upon a TV, we find ourselves instantly captivated by its aura, and eventually that same aura, as it always does, puts us to sleep.  We wake in the morning and begin to explore the city. La Paz is full of tourists, and the city is based upon indulging those tourists more or less, and we begin to edulge ourselves in shopping.  With tons of stores of artesineas we instantly find ourselves wasting time and money in our four days in La Paz. Wasting is perhaps the wrong term, but it is a fact we spent much time in money in the various shops in La Paz. (all good gifts I assure you folks back home!)  So we checked out of our hotel, and found a cheaper hostel with a private room for us, where we spent our next three days in the city.  Like I said there isn´t too much to go into detail about La Paz, as we mainly spent our time window shopping, but there is so much to look at!  We found a real cheap (cheapest in the country, to date 15/2) pizza place, right next door to our hostel, were you could get a liter of cola and a pizza for two for 20 bolivianos! Which equates to just under $3USD.  And how could I forget! Our third night in the city we went to a ´peña´which was a restaraunt that entertained you with traditional music and dancing of the area, along with a meal.  It was really quite entertaining, but the lump sum you paid didnt cover drinks, and like previously mentioned we´re trying to keep things on the cheap side, so after being there for four hours, and only having a drink a piece, the main show ended and we decided to depart due to lack of energy. But the show continued on, apparently.  As we were leaving the announcer shouted for no one to go any where, for only the first performance had ended (this being 2AM) and they we´re keeping this party going till six in the morning! Wow! Talk about a late night, but a Peruvian I once worked with, did tell me once that the real fun doesn´t begin until after 3AM, but we were (and did) going to have to find that out another night.  The peña was a great experience, I´m not sure how true it held to the traditions of the bolivian people of the area, but nonetheless a great time was had.  So after another day in the city we ventured back to the bus terminal and booked tickets for another overnight bus ride that would take us to our intended destination from the get-go of our journey, Bolivias óther´capital city, Sucre! More to come......

Isla del sol continuada....

So here we are again, almost a month since our last post.  We`re not doing so great with the whole blogging thing BUT we`ve resolved to get back to it as we are at least half way through our trip but have only documented a small fraction of it! 

Pig welcomes us to his village

Well, as we mentioned previously, we decided to walk from Copacabana to Yampupata, a town at the end of the Peninsula and with just a small stretch of water inbetween it and Isla del sol.  Due to its proximity to the island, we figured it would be pretty easy to catch a cheap ride over to the island.  Anyhow, the guide book gave us some rough directions on how to get there (pretty much just following a road) and we set out.  The walk itself wasn`t so difficult but we were carrying all of our belongings on our back (including tent, sleeping pads and other camping equipment) hiking at over 4000 meters (13,100ft!), and the sun was strong!  The beautiful scenery kept us going.  We passed through a number of small villages, hiked through some forest and part of an Inka trail and after five hours, we reached Yampupata.  Upon arriving, we quickly realized this was not the touristy town with frequent boat departures that we had imagined.  In fact, we didnt see anyone until we walked right up to the dock where there were a number of boats.  Sitting on the stoop to the boathouse were two old men.  They informed us that we could either pay 70 bolivianos to be taken across in row boat or 120 bs (bs=bolivianos) in motor boat.  This was more than double the price it cost to go in motor boat from Copacabana!  I guess not enough people choose to walk 5 additional hours before reaching Isla del Sol... while 70 bs translates to just about 10 US dollars, we were quite stressed upon learning of this as there are not ATMs in Copacabana and we had a very limited amount of cash that we had changed at the border.  As there was no way to swim across, we went with the cheaper option in row boat.  Upon saying this, one of the old men got up and lead us to the row boat.  At this point I had no idea how old this guy was but I must admit I felt ashamed having him row us across. He was definitely older than our parents (and since they make up 2 of our 7 "followers" I will omit their ages). Halfway through the ride, the guy was panting heavily and had to take off some layers (as is the custom, he was wearing a thick wool sweater and it was certainly in the 70s and sunny!).  At this point he confessed to us that he was 76 years old (and "proved it" by taking off his hat and saying "look, no hair!").  That was incredible news to us as we had imagined at most 65.  I then felt even more ashamed as he was undoubtedly in better shape than I was and is half a century older.
Anyhow, a half hour more of rowing (1 hour total) and more heavy panting, we made it to the island.  We were quite relieved the guy didn`t die on us. I must say that on first glance of the island, we were not too impressed.  For some reason, and I partly blame the guide book, I had imagined a beautiful tropical oasis (in the middle of the Andes?!) and what I saw was a big dry rock.  In addition to lacking in aesthetics, the second we stepped off the boat (and wished the grandpa luck in surviving the trip back) we were told we had to pay an entrance fee of 10 bs each!  "Great, sure glad we have a few peanuts left to eat tonight" was my first thought.  We payed the fees and headed toward these inka steps that follow natural springs up the hillside.  These were also supposed to be pretty special however rains had not been plentiful and what we saw was the tiniest of trickles running next to some super steep stairs.  Note: At this point we were already exhausted due to the hike and lack of sleep the previous night and I`m pretty sure even a tropical oasis in the middle of the Andes would not have impressed us at that point. So we pushed ourselves to continue and slowly made our way up the stairs. Once it started to level out towards the top, we started to get ambushed by small children trying to pull us to their family owned hostal.  Ignoring them was not working and finally we said "see the tent, we are camping!" to which they replied with satisfaction that there were no camping spots on the South side of the island.  We stopped short.  Looking at the sky, there was about one hour of light left and no possible way we would be able to make it to the north end.  We definitely did not have enough money for both a hostal and the return trip to Copacabana.  Hoping the children were wrong, we continued on and after another 15 minutes or so they gave up on us.  As we were reaching the top, and starting to believe the kids were right as there certainly looked to be no flat areas for setting up the tent, we ran into a "villiage official" who informed us that yes, there is camping on the south end and that basically you can put your tent wherever you want to.  That was a relief but we still had to find some place not on a steep slope.  Our stomachs took over our reasoning skills though and we decided to get some pizza, (yes, pizza on ancient Isla del sol! Some would consider that a sacrilege but I will eat pizza anywhere and everywhere) before setting up tent.  "Las Velas" which means "The Candles" was at the crest of the hill past a eucalyptus grove.  A quaint little straw hut in the midst of construction, we were overjoyed when they told us, "please, camp here!" and there was a nice flat area outside the restaurant.  While we were starving, we had to share a small pizza and it tasted so delicious after having only snacked on peanuts and oranges all day.  We finished our day with a beautiful sunset over the lake and crawled into the tent.
Next morning we set off hiking early.  After just two hours we reached a station where a man indicated we were crossing the border from the South to the North part of the island and informed us it would cost 15bs each.  This was the last straw for us.  Nick proclaimed that Isla del Sol sucks!  We had no choice to pay it and in our minds we feared we would not have enough to get back to Copacabana, let alone for the bus ride to La Paz.   We hiked another 3 hours, attempting to enjoy the scenery and the few dismal ruins that remained but also thinking the place sucked at the same time.  Ruins are just rocks after all.  Our hunger, exhaustion and lack of funds would not permit us to have a positive mindset.  While we had originally planned on staying another night, when we saw the return boats just down the hill from us, we made a run for it.  And the price for the return boat...20 bs! and by motor boat!  The only good thing about Isla del Sol, we thought, getting off of it! We paid, hopped on, and enjoyed watching the island getting smaller and smaller until finally it was out of our sight.  Thank God.  Now we just needed to miraculously find money for our bus tickets to La Paz...

Isla Del Sol

Welcome to Bolivia...border with Peru

Still trying to play catch-up on the blog, so here we go!  After our four days in Cusco, Peru we ventured further along on our intended journey and arrived in Bolivia (Yeah!)  So we hopped across the Peru-Bolivian border and made our way to Copacabana.  Just a small little town on the shore of Lake Titicaca, we spent most of our first day there just wandering around, but we climbed the mirador where they were preparing to celebrate a holiday of some sort (don´t quite remember the specifics).  At the top of the mirador looking down upon Lake Titicaca they were selling little knick knacks, like toy homes, cars, buses, trucks, money. Anything and everything that they hope to obtain in the new year, which is the main point of the ceremony, to buy these minature objects of something they hope to possess in the next year, and apparently they shall recieve it.  Not too interesting really, everyone the world around just wants material things. But later that day we were looking for a place to set up our tents for the night, and werent finding any areas with good ground to do so.  The beach of the lake was pretty rocky.  In our search along the shore we ran in to a young Argentinian named Nico who offered us to stay at this little enclosed camping area that he was volunteering at.  So we took him up on his offer, and spent the night hanging out with him and the other volunteers (most from Argentina, but some from Guatemala and Ecuador as well), drinking, eating, and listening to them singing and playing various Latin American songs (like "el comandante" about Che Guevarra).  It was really a memorable night in all aspects, with the food, the music, and of course the people.  The next day we set out early before anyone else was awake (not purposefully of course, but the night before did last quite a while) and set out for Isla Del Sol, an island upon Lake Titicaca where the Incas had built temples and practiced religious ceremonies...