Bolivia is a friendly country, except at the border

The last couple of days warrant a book, not a single blog entry. But I don´t have the time (or the patience) to hammer out 300 pages, so a few paragraphs will have to suffice.

Where to begin? Well, when I last wrote, I was in Arica, Chile. I didn´t stay in the world´s thinnest country for much longer--I crossed the border back into Bolivia last Thursday. (I spent Wednesday night sleeping on a bus at the border: I´m still not sure why anyone would schedule a bus to arrive at the border at 3 a.m., when it´s closed.) A word of advice: do not accuse Bolivian immigration officials of corruption when the ¨tax¨ they want you to pay is actually legit. It goes like this. ¨15 Bolivianos for your entrance stamp, please.¨ Me: ¨Oh really? Does everyone pay this tax, or just the gringos?¨ ¨Everyone.¨ ¨I don´t believe you.¨ (Official pulls out book of regulations and shows me that, in fact, everyone does pay.) Let´s just say that he had some strong words for me, including stuff like ¨imperialist.¨

Oh wait--something really important happened before I crossed the border. Location: the public library in Calama, Chile. Event: a giant earthquake. I´ve been told that most of the time, the ground moves back and forth during earthquakes... well, this time, it went up and down. So my attempt to run to the doorjam really looked more like a skip--every time I took I step, I got bounced up a bit. As soon as the shaking stopped, I headed outside, where I stayed for the rest of the day. I learned later that the quake had been 7.7 magnitude, and it lasted for 40 seconds. I could have sworn it was more like 10 minutes.

From Calama, I traveled to Uyuni, Bolivia. I spent one night there, then headed out on a tour of the surrounding area, including the world´s largest salt desert, the Salar de Uyuni.

Let´s pause for a moment and do a little experiment. Get some salt and dump it on the table. Next, find a lamp and shine it on said salt. Now imagine that this bright, glittering salt extends all the way to the horizon, and that you are standing in the middle of it. There´s really no way to do justice to the overwhelming beauty of the Salar: I had a good conversation with some Argentines (more about them later) about the lack of adequate words. The Salar is flat. It is very white and salty. It is also very big. That just doesn´t work! Okay, how about this. The ocean isn´t particularly remarkable either--it´s just a bunch of water. The Salar is like the ocean: the very fact that there is so much of just one thing is overwhelming. Simply hard salt desert to the horizon. Further, it´s perfect: white hexagons repeat and repeat to form a pattern that continues for dozens of kilometers. Last Friday, at three in the afternoon, I walked 100 meters away from my group, out onto the untracked salt, and it was absolutely silent. No joke: I could have been on a different planet.

That extraterrestrial feeling would return several times during the three days that I traveled with Roberto, our Bolivian guide and driver. We saw lakes made pink by algea and green by copper, and a desert so red it could have been on mars.

There were also more earthly moments to the trip: vicuña by the dozen, and rock formations that made me wish I had packed a pair of climbing shoes and my rack. (A belayer would have helped too.) And every once and a while, the reality of the gringo trail would intrude on the stunning beauty of southeast Bolivia--that would be when the Land Cruiser of loud Irish tourists arrived where we were.

See, there´s a bit of a catch-22 about traveling in South America. The out-of-this-world places, like the Salar or Macchu Picchu, are also where everyone goes. The marvels of South America have been discovered, and while it´s well worth it to join the masses in pursuit of beauty, that can´t be the whole point of a trip. I´ve met a lot of people who are simply traveling from wonder to wonder, and while that might work for some people, it doesn´t work for me. ¨For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.¨ When I found this quote (Robert Louis Stevenson) a couple of weeks ago, I decided that Rob and I would have gotten along just fine. I´m not going anywhere, I´m just going.

Going for five more weeks, that is. Tomorrow, I will rejoin my Argentine friends for a tour of the mine here in Potosí: formerly the world´s largest silver mine, Cerro Rico now produces loads of tin. It´s one of those things that you´ve just got to do in Bolivia. I´m a little nervous, since I don´t really like caves too much, but I´ll be fine. Hell, I made it through a 7.7 magnitude quake last week.

Oh, the Argentines! Well, there are three: Julio, Buli, and Ana. They´re all around 70. Julio runs a retreat outside Buenos Aires (he described it as ¨lots of yoga, and lots of thinking like Gandhi.¨), and invited me to spend a day or two there (free!) when I´m in Argentina. Buli and Ana (married) were shocked when I said I didn´t have plans for Christmas in Buenos Aires, and they insisted that I call if I don´t have anywhere to go for La Navidad. I think I will!

Now there´s just the question of Thanksgiving in a few days... I think fried chicken might be the closest I can get to turkey in Bolivia.

Chow.

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving! I´m now in Sucre, Bolivia, and I thought I´d add a little to my previous post.

The mines of Cerro Rico were pretty tough, both physically and emotionally. They´re very dusty and hot, so it´s difficult to breath, but then you see the miners and feel like a wimp. After all, the tour lasts about three hours, and they´re working for up to 16 hours a day--some pull 24 hour shifts. The money is good, by Bolivian standards (about 140-160 dollars a month), but it still stands that I can make as much in one day painting houses as these guys make in a month. That´s awful.

But it could be way worse. The mines are run as cooperatives, so profits are shared and most miners have some sort of insurance. (Membership in a cooperative isn´t required, though, and some just work independently, selling ore on their own.) It´s still a very, very dangerous job, but things have improved on that front too: since the Spaniards first started silver mining in the 16th century, eight million people have died in Cerro Rico. (No joke. That number comes from a book.)

I may have painted and excessively rosy picture of the mines: they´re really terrible. Miners rarely wear any sort of lung protection, and most develop silicosis (basically, the lungs don´t absorb oxygen as well as they should) within about two years. Most miners are under 35, simply because people don´t last that long underground. Few die, but most get sick and have to quit. There are exceptions: we met one man who had worked in the mine for 27 years. He´s 45 years old. On the other end of the spectrum, we talked with a 16-year-old who had been working for two years, almost every day.

People don´t eat or drink in the mine, they just chew coca. It´s a powerful stimulant that allows the miners to work incredible hours, and in theory, the extra saliva in the mouth acts as a sort of a filter to keep the dust out of the lungs. I´m not sure I buy that.

I traveled to Sucre almost immediately after getting out of the mines (I have never been so happy to see sun and fresh air!), and I really like this city. The tourist industry is important here, but it´s hardly the only thing going on. Sucre is one of Bolivia´s two official capitals (the other is La Paz), but Sucre wants to be the only one. So every once and a while, the city just shuts down and everyone goes out to protest. Today is one of those days: the main plaza is full of people waving flags and chanting, ´´¡Sucre! ¡Sucre! ¡Capital plena!´´ If that´s not enough, there´s a big open air concert tonight to support the plan. Should be a good time.

My Thanksgiving was disappointing. Let´s just say that it´s unfortunate that the only time I´ve felt unwelcome on this entire trip was when I tried to have Thanksgiving dinner with the Peace Corps. I don´t want to go into much detail, but it just sucks. I´ve been all over this continent and felt at home everywhere, but on the one day when Americans are supposed to come together, I was basically kicked to the curb. I´ll remember that as one of the seriously low points to this trip.

I´ll be in Sucre for a few more days. On Sunday, I´ll travel to Oruro and take a train south to Tupiza. My plan isn´t to sure yet (is it ever?), but I think I´ll be there for a couple days before traveling to Tarija. From there, I´ll cross the border into Argentina. And maybe Paraguay, if I can find a consulate that´s actually open. (The one here in Sucre is closed for two weeks.)

I´m doing well. Thanksgiving without family isn´t much fun, but it´s a tradeoff. I mean, one depressing, lonely day for 87 great ones? Yeah, I´ll take that.

Hasta luego.

P.P.S. I took some self portraits on the tour of the salar... I call this one ´´Wow, that was a big bump!´´

Sun so bright it makes you sneeze

I awoke this morning to the sound of a very loud public address system squaking in Spanish. It took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on, but after a while, the amplified syllables began make sense. An awards ceremony, marking the end of the Chilean school year, was going on across the street at the middle school. School´s out for summer here in Arica.

And summer it unquestionably is. Yesterday, I laid on the beach for a couple of hours. Today, I bought an ice cream cone and raced to eat it before the sun turned it into a sweet, sticky mess. (I won.) Tomorrow, I´ll travel the coastal route from here to Iquique, four hours south.

Yes, after nearly six weeks in the high Andes, I´ve reached the coast. And damn, is it nice. The sun at 4,000 meters was so bright it made me sneeze. Here, solar rays seem more friendly: they gently warm my face as opposed to immediately turning skin bright red and puffy. This seems like a silly detail, but it was one of the first things I noticed here—I don´t need to fear the sun as I did in the mountains.

But my retreat to the lowlands won´t last long. On Wednesday, I´ll board a night train from the Chilean coast, heading to Uyuni, Bolivia. (I was in La Paz, Bolivia, the highest capital city in the world, just a few days ago. I´ll get to why I´ve made a stopover here in Chile, instead of going direct to Uyuni, in a bit.) Uyuni sits on the eastern flank of the world´s driest region, surrounded by massive salt flats. But how about I write about Uyuni when I get there? All I´m doing now is paraphrasing my guidebook.

The past two weeks have been more about survival than grand adventures. When I last wrote, I was in Cusco, the gringo capital of South America, where I turned down daily offers of cocaine and pot. (´´You like marijuana, cocaine, my friend?´´) The only thing to do was keep walking. I got used to that. The jalagringos (gringo-pullers, literally) where a little harder to avoid: they stand on sidewalks and tout restaraunts, Macchu Picchu tours, and kitschy crafts, generally in memorized English phrases. So what to do? I just said, ´´Ya comí, ya fui, ya tengo.´´ (I´ve already eaten, already gone, already have it.) That seemed to work.

Indeed, Cusco was kind of about surviving. It´s beautiful but absolutely overrun, so I didn´t stay long, opting to head to Lake Titicaca with a (misguided) hope of escaping the hordes. Instead, a different menance arrived (in my gut). Basically, I got really sick. Traveler´s diarrhea, I thought, so I busted out the antibiotics. That seemed to help for a couple days, but then it was back, but with nausea and intense stomach cramping to boot. I initially returned to the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca for medical care, where I was told I was dehyrdated and given IV fluids (the nurse asked for my email address), and that helped a bit with the nausea. But the terrible stomach pains persisted, so I decided La Paz and its modern medical facilities where my best bet.

The four hour colectivo ride from Copacabana (on the Bolivian shore of the lake) to La Paz is memorable for two reasons: the first hour was spectacularly beautiful (I kept thinking we had finally lost sight of the lake, but then it would reappear around another curve), and the final three were the most painful of my life. I just reclined the front seat of the Toyota minibus (much to the chagrin of passengers behind me), and tried to ignore the awful feeling that small, carniverous animals were carving holes in my small intestines. Unfortunately, my magical pain pills (an absolute necessity) were packed away in my backpack, which was precariously positioned on the roof. Eventually, we got to La Paz, I found a taxi (didn´t even bargain it hurt so bad), and made my way to a hotel, where I took a bunch of feel-good drugs and went to sleep for three hours.

Most of my time in La Paz was spent going back and forth between the hotel and the doctor´s office, passing by the which doctor´s market. (They sell all sorts of medicinal herbs, and, most strangely, dried llama fetuses. I felt marginally better so I wasn´t tempted to try either.) Tests for giardia came back negative, but I didn´t care, because I felt better, probably thanks to the fact that I was eating only in tourist restaraunts and sleeping 14 hours a day.

And my health improves every day. I didn´t anticipate coming to the coast, but it´s nearly impossible to recuperate at 4,000 meters (that´s the minimum height of the Bolivian altiplano), and northern Chile is pretty much perfect for getting better. So now, I´m on the mend, and ready to go back into the mountains.

While bits of the previous two weeks have been absolutely, incredibly, awful, I´ve enjoyed most of my time. Lake Titicaca is aaaamazing. The border between Peru and Bolivia on the coast is probably the most beautiful international checkpoint ever. (Well, the Chilean-Bolivian border I crossed just two days ago was pretty spectacular too.) And it is remarkably strange to stand at 4,000 meters, staring out at a lake that stretches to the horizon, while 6,000 meter peaks dominate the skyline to the east. And the sunset! Have you ever seen the sky turn a million colors over Lake Titicaca?

It would have liked to visit some of the islands on Lake Titicaca, but I was worried that seasicknesss might multiply my other symptoms and leave me dying on the deck of a tour boat. So I guess I´ll just have to come back, right?

My time in Arica has been limited to sitting on the beach, reading English-language magazines, and planning my trip. I have six weeks and two days left: no where near enough time to do everything I want. Remember that red line marking my intended route on the map at the top of the page? Well, disregard it. I´m going to return to Bolivia for a while, and then I´ll probably end up in Argentina. Paraguay (?) is a real possibility as well, since I´d like to see the Mennonite communities there and the old Jesuit social missions as well. But I really don´t know: I´ll get my Paraguayan visa tomorrow in Iquique, but my itinerary is still up in the air. All I know is that I´ll be traveling, more or less southeast, until I get to Buenos Aires in December.

Some of the more geographically astute of you have by now noticed that my new route excludes Patagonia. Yes it does. And I still can´t really believe that I have voluntarily given up a trip to a region I have wanted to visit for years, but I just don´t have time. And Patagonia is best explored with other people... the mountains there are not meant to be climbed solo. So once again, another trip needs to be planned.

What else to report: I found a nice café in La Paz that sells real ground coffee. I almost bought some, but when I asked about filters, they said there was no where in the whole city to buy them. That broke the deal. But even better, I bought earplugs yesterday! Remember, future South American adventurers: foam earplugs are absolutely unknown on this continent. People will look at you like you´re crazy when you say you want little pieces of foam to stick in your ears. I am very happy to have a healthy supply of these non-narcotic sleep aids for the rest of my trip.

Well, it´s five o´clock here in Chile, which means I should probably go back to the beach. Hope all is well wherever you are. The traveling life is not always this comfortable... I don´t mind a bit of comfort now and then.