We're Still Here.

After finishing up Spanish school in the middle of January, we spent 2.5 weeks travelling in Bolivia and Chile. Now, it's March and we've finally put up pictures from our January jaunt. Like the last time, we've cleverly manipulated our blog so that pictures go from oldest to most recent. This means that you can simply scroll from top to bottom and satisfy all your linear-temporal desires.

For those curious about our current whereabouts and happenings, we've been back in Cochabamba since February 1st. We live in a big house with 4 other extranjeros from the US and Switzerland, along with Chichi (our matriarch) and her son José Miguel. Leah's volunteering fulltime at a Guardería (daycare), which you can read all about in glorious detail far below. Jeff spends his days working in a... hmm... homework club for girls from rough situations. He also teaches a computer class. (Pictures of this aren't up yet, but will come one day!)

Enjoy!

Drawing Supplement

For all of you who liked the photos from Leah's sketchbook last time, here are a few more assorted drawings. These days, her muses are mostly children under the age of three.

(We just added this in so it's not part of the linear flow. Sorry. )

Flowers from our hostel in Sucre.

Another one, this time at the botanical gardens in Cocha.

Marvin watching TV at the Guardería. See entry way, way below for more info on toddlers in Leah's life.

Naptime.

Vivi, also featured in a photo further down.

Inspired by a drunken man with huge lips who sat with us at a party.

Sucre

Sucre was the first place we visited after leaving Cocha in January. According to Jeff, it was also the most boring. Poor Sucre. Here's what it did have going for it: a cement quarry full of dinosaur footprints, some nice museums, and very pretty white-washed colonial buildings. Also, Leah got locked in a church because she was digging Jesus so hard.

Jeff and T-Rex.

Ah, the old dinosaur-bikini babe combination. Calendars like this were all over Sucre.

Vegetable market.

Potosí

Potosí was one of the places we visited that couldn't quite be captured on film (by us, anyway. We're sure someone has taken very expressive photos of the place). The city was once the richest in the Americas, thanks to the Cerro Rico, the mineral-rich mountain whose bald red face looms over the city. The silver that made the Spaniards so rich has since petered out, and the streets are crowded with decaying colonial facades and enormous old stone churches. It's very high and very cold.

We got out of the city to spend some time at a hot spring that was supposedly frequented by Inca emporors, and to wander in the hills and llama pastures that surround the city. Our serene picnic was punctuated by the sound of dynamite blasts from the nearby mines.

The day after our hike we got a little closer to the dynamite during our tour of the mines. Some anecdotes to get you in the mood. Then: 8 million African and indigenous Bolivian slaves died in the mines under the Spanish. Most African slaves lasted less than a year in the punishing high altitude conditions. At one point, the Spanish mandated that indigenous Bolivian men would all have to serve a six month term working in the mines - working, eating and sleeping underground. Clearly, Western Culture is the most superior and civilized.

Now: The average life span for a miner is fifteen years after entering the mines, and many miners begin as adolescents. On average, one miner dies on the job every week. The miners don't eat or drink during their entire work day, they just chew enormous mouthfuls of coca.

Our tour started with a trip to a miner's store to buy gifts of coca, cigarettes, and the 90 proof alcohol that the miners drink on Fridays. The tourists bring offerings to the miners, and the miners bring offerings to the Tio, the devil who presides over the mines (see photo below). The tour took us through passages so low we had to crawl, passages so vertical we had to climb down ladders, tunnels with rails built in the 16th century and still used today, and to an underground museum where the walls shook with blasts of dynamite. It was tough going, and we didn't even have to do anything besides watch other people labour away. Perhaps the most sobering part of visiting the mines is knowing that despite the fact that dozens, if not hundreds of people from around the world come to witness the horrific working conditions every day, nothing changes for the men who work there.

Bonus fact that we learned at the old mint in Potosí: the five Boliviano piece, which resembles the Canadian twoonie, is made at the mint in Ottawa.

The Eye of the Inca hotspring.

Lagoon and Cerro Rico.

Llamas. (Cerro rico in the background.)

Word.

Refinery plant just outside the city.

Tours that feature active dynamite are the best. (Really, anyone can buy dynamite in Potosí. Anyone. Even you.)

A humbling tour through the mines. We were exhausted after an hour of mucking around.

A section from the colonial era that's still in use. The only actual light at the time was coming from their headlamps.

El Tio. Offerings - coca leaves, 90 proof alcohol and cigarettes - left by miners to appease him. Note the large phallus.

3 miners taking a break with Tio. They sat and nodded along, chewing coca, as our tour guide recounted the horrifying death and injury rates in the mines (past and present).

Pigs in car.

Old and new.

400 year old streets.

El Salar de Uyuni

We took a bus from Potosí to Uyuni, lured by the famous Salar (salt flats). We spent three days touring the Salar and the nearby deserts by jeep, with four other tourists: John, the child aid worker from Ireland; Alex, the young high finance dude from England; Erwin, the Dutch guy with the loud voice; and Gustavo, the Argentinian geographer. Running the show were Julieta, the surly cook, and Juan, the driver, who alternated a pumpin' eighties mix tape with Andean music - pan pipes featured prominently.

The landscapes were surreal beyond anything we'd seen so far. We drove through desolate stretches of red, orange, and yellow deserts, saw lagoons full of flamingos, bizarre rock formations, vicuñas (wild llama-like things), and of course, many snow capped mountains (everpresent in the west of Bolivia). The Salar itself was covered in a foot of water and reflected the sky without end in every direction. Even the gaggle of tourists staging trick photos and drinking fanta at little folding tables couldn't spoil the obscenely beautiful view. Apparently, no corner of South America is beyond the reach of the tentacles of the Coca Cola Corp. Of course, we'd be lying if we said the fanta wasn't extremely refreshing.

Note: 6 of the pics below were taken by Alex. Thanks, man!

John in a train graveyard outside of Uyuni. (When we asked John about his vest and hat he regaled us with the many benefits of travelling in leather. Take that Quick Dry.)

Playing on the Salar.

Flamingos at 4500m.

The Coloured Lake - the red part is also water.

Funny lunch in an abandoned sulphur mining village.

Leah drawing. (Drawing not included- withheld by artist.)

Geysers at sunrise.

Getting caught in the act by Alex.

The most helpful "park here" sign on the planet.

Arica, Chile

Upon finishing our tour of the Salar, it was time to leave Bolivia for a bit and cross the border into Chile. The crossing was desolate, and only notable for the way the dirt road magically became paved on the much wealthier Chilean side. We spent the day in the bizarre, touristy, oasis city of San Pedro, waiting for a bus that would take us to the beachy, touristy, coastal city of Arica in northern Chile.

Arica now means four things for us: Carnaval, which we stumbled upon by accident; soft sand; big, delicious nectarines; and sandwiches - especially the completo variety, which means overflowing tomatoes, mayonaise and mashed avocado with whatever else you've ordered. We also got to spend more time with John from Ireland, a real prince of a man (note cowboy looking guy above).

About the Carnaval pics below: compared to Carnaval in Oruro and Cochabamba (in Bolivia) which took place two and three weeks later, Arica's Carnaval was rather staid. In other words, it wasn't a foam and water-balloon filled drink-a-thon, with 9 year old boys selling cans of beer wherever you went. That said, we only have pictures from Arica because the amount of water (and pickpockets) at Bolivian Carnaval forced us to leave our cameras at home. The costumes and dances were similar, however.

Checking out the coast south of Arica.

Getting ready for the parade.

Boo!


Foosball: Second in popularity only to actual futbol.

According to our research, South America is the continent with the most marching bands per capita.

Jeff, John, and Tuba Man get cozy.

One of the mini dancers.

Concession bike.

Nice gams!

Way up high in La Paz

Leaving behind delicious sandwiches, bell-clad boots, and Canadian prices, we took a very jiggy bus (boxed lunch, movies) from Arica back to La Paz, Bolivia. It was one of those typical Andean-Altiplano busrides where there's a snow capped mountain around every bend or maybe a pasture full of chilling llamas.

Though downtown La Paz sits at an elevation of 3200m, it's at thebottom of a bowl with steep sides that stretch upwards in all directions. Houses pour over the edges from El Alto (4000m), the city above the city. La Paz itself is an amazing mix of insane traffic, old, narrow streets crowded with market stalls, and every kind of street food imagineable.

Our favourite... er... adventure was when a taxi driver went the wrong way and proceeded to reverse down an incredibly steep one-way street for 2.5 blocks, narrowly avoiding carts of flowers, pedestrians, and, yes, other cars. Our favourite 'site' was the Coca museum. This cozy museum is dedicated (obviously) to the coca leaf, which is grown here in massive quantity and is chewed by basically everybody. It is also the base plant for cocaine. Displays that are rather science fair-ish document the huge role that coca plays in all the indigenous cultures here, its nutrional benefits, and the American attempt to eradicate it with its (in)famous War on Drugs. One display points out how US policy only targets the impoverished growers and not the Big Pharma corporations that produce the chemicals necessary for coca's transformation into cocaine, nor the offshore banks that launder the money. A grimly true and unsurprising conclusion.

Our other memorable moments almost all revolved around food. We took advantage of La Paz's big-cityness to eat at Japanese, Middle Eastern and French places. Though we found a restaurant called La Quebecoise, poutine was notably absent from the menu. Judging by the slightly irritated look on the waiter's face, we guessed that he got that question a lot.

Living it up on the bus.

Crossing the street in downtown La Paz.

Dried llama fetuses used for offerings to pachumama (mother earth) in the witch's market.

Soup train.

More offerings (fake money, sugar animals, coca leaves, decorative shiny things, etc.) to pachumama that are burned on top of incense (also in the witch's market).

In one part of downtown La Paz it's hard to tell where streets stop and markets begin.