La Paz/Tiahuanaco

What a blast. I went to La Paz for a couple of days, mainly to attend the Aymara new year (also the winter solstice) just outside of La Paz, in Tiahuanaco. We were a motley bunch, with 3 Bolivians, 4 Americans, 2 Germans, and 1 Frenchman. We took an a bus from Cbba and got into La Paz just after midnight on Thursday morning, left our bags at our hostel, and headed straight back out to catch a trufi to Tiahuanaco, just under 2 hours away.

When we got there around 3 am, there were already thousands of people eating, drinking, playing music, and huddling around fires to stay warm. At almost 4,000 meters in the middle of the night, it was freezing outside (there was actually frost on backpacks). Tiahuanaco is the site of a park that holds ruins from about 700 AD, predating the Inca in the area. The ruins aren't actually all that impressive, until you see a celebration like this take place and can sort of imagine what it might have been like back in the day.

Since the gates didn't open until 5 am, there was a lot of standing around, jumping up and down to stay warm, etc. When we were finally let in (estimates range from 4-10 thousand people that day, I think it was somewhere in the middle), paths lit by clay lanterns led us up to the "cheap seats" overlooking the central plaza. There was more sitting around, and to keep ourselves busy we chewed coca, offered up wishes to the four winds, and tried to ignore the fact that we couldn't feel all of our digits.

When it finally started to get a bit light out, we could make out the central plaza, where a large fire was ablaze with offerings from the gathered crowd. There was some music, but the real action didn't start until the sun started to show itself, around 7:15 am. At this point, the entire crowd turned to the east and raised their hands to the first sun of the new year, taking in its energy (I got a lot of energy that morning in the form of a sunburn).



Once the sun was up, there were cheers of "Ayaya Bolivia!" (Aymara for "Viva Bolivia!"). The Aymara flag went up (beautiful), an army band played the national anthem, and then the real party started. Everybody flooded the central plaza, Aymara bands played drums and flutes, and we all danced.


Back in La Paz, we spent the next day and a half wandering and eating. It's an amazing city with breathtaking views. A few more pics before I cut off this long post:

Mikaël, Aurélie, Coco, and me in our hostel room.

Lindenfelser

Linden = type of tree
Fels = rock (how appropriate)

As my late Grandpa once showed me, we hail from the town of Lindenfels, Hessen, Germany...
Pretty, huh?

Despedida

As I write, I'm listening to the mariachi band that plays every Sunday at the bar across the street, loud enough for everyone within a 3-block radius to hear... It's good until the 5th or 6th hour, roughly...

One of our workers, Erica, is leaving us today. She's off to Ecuador for another job for the rest of the summer, rounding up high school students who are studying there for 6 weeks. So, we had a despedida for her on Friday night, combined with a birthday celebration for Johanna, another worker. There was lots of celebrating and dancing in a very tiny space - made even more interesting as it was turned into a sort of dance version of musical chairs: whoever was left the odd person out without a partner had to dance with a broom for a song.

Some of our office crew at the party, from left: John (part-time volunteer from Essex), Meghan (national director, her house), Erica (who's leaving), Boria (from Santa Cruz), me, Alyssa (volunteer from D.C.), Erik (director of ecotourism), and Johanna (campaigns). Missing: Ivon, Fatima, Judy.

In other "news", I finally found an artist I have been trying to track down at a local fair yesterday... He makes some wicked cool jewelry, which I am a sucker for, so I bought a necklace from him:

Up for this week: hopefully going to La Paz overnight on Wednesday for the Aymara new year celebration on Thursday, then doing a bit of sightseeing, maybe some biking.

Life cycle of an avocado

(credit to Steve for the inspiration for the pics, from his artichoke series hanging in my living room)

Fresas

I just wanted to share with you the wonderful image of a delicious strawberry... I've eaten almost a kilo today and last night. I hope they don't give me a bad case of Montezuma's revenge.

Photos

For more photos, I've started putting some up on Flickr, since Yahoo photos is soon to be defunct. Click here to see them. (My old photos from Yahoo will probably be transfered to Flickr soon too.)

Misadventure in Oruro

I introduced Animal to some animals, originally uploaded by trekker_neris.

Where to begin? What was supposed to be a nice, 2-night trip to see a volcano and some hot springs turned into a circus of compromises and unexpected delays.

The trip to Oruro was interesting in itself - within a half an hour on the windy mountain roads, we saw an overturned 18-wheeler that had apparently been carrying scrap metal or something of the sort. Luckily it tipped toward the mountain rather than down the precipitous slope, and it even left enough room for our bus to squeeze by. At every town or toll booth we would pick up or drop off market women selling either complete, hot, fried chicken meals, fresh oranges, ice cream, or bread. As people finished their meals on the bus they either threw the trash out the window or dropped their chicken bones and orange peels on the floor. Funny that they kept most of the organic, biodegradable stuff on the bus, and threw the plastic stuff out the window where it'll sit on the roadside for the next few decades. It got dark about half way into the ride, so the views over the 100's-1,000-ft dropoffs ceased, but the sunsets here have always been an awesome sight.

We got into Oruro late and found our hotel (a little over $10/night/2 people, relatively expensive by standards here). Of course there are practically no restaurants or cafes in the town, at least none that are open according to any discernable schedule. I think by then end of the last day we had walked the entire town at least a half a dozen times, for lack of anything else to do. The next day we planned to go to Volcán Sajama, which we were told was about an hour and a half further west towards the Chilean border by a friend who is from Oruro. Well, that was an extremely optimistic estimate. It turned out to be more like 4-5 hours more, but by the time we found that out, it was too late in the day to be able to get there, have time to hike around, and catch the last micro or bus back to Oruro. We had to settle for seeing the snow-capped peaks from the bus between Oruro and Patacamaya, a town on the way to La Paz. We tried to make the most of our stop in Patacamaya by watching a local football game, wandering the market, and approaching mules and other tethered animals scattered throughout the town.

Since Volcán Sajama was a bust, we tried to make the most of our Sunday afternoon and evening by wandering some more, and decided to go to the local hot springs the next morning. This also turned out to be quite a chore, since the micros (5 Bs. or about $0.70) won't run unless they are full, which they will never be on a Monday morning. We ended up paying way too much for a taxi driver to take us there, wait for us, and bring us back to Oruro. This should have taken about a half hour each way, but of course there was a paro on the main roads out of town, so our taxi had to cut through the town garbage dump each way, where other micros and buses were getting stuck in the massive ditches and muck left and right. This also meant that our bus back to Cochabamba that afternoon couldn't get through, so we had to amuse ourselves with more town wandering until about 6:30, when we were lucky enough to get the last 2 seats on one of the first buses back out of town.

ripple - if you use Google to search, please read this!

I've just read a brief article on an organization called ripple, which has its own search engine that is directly powered by Google (so it basically comes up with the same stuff as a regular Google search). But instead of giving money to the regular advertisers that Google has on its search pages, this org donates 100% of its "ad" revenue to one of 4 charities: water through WaterAid, food through Oxfam, education through Oak Tree, and money through the Grameen Foundation (the microlending pioneer).

So, for any of you who use Google to search, whether you use it once a week or have it as your homepage like I do, please use ripple instead! You'll get the same search results but will be helping a cause at the same time.

For the article that I read, go here (on the WorldChanging site).

Tell all your friends!

World Envrionment Day

Today was world environment day, so everyone here at the office spent the day out in the city, handing out information on Environment Las Americas' programs and campaigns and the issues that are affecting Cochabamba, Bolivia, and the Americas. I ended up at the local University de San Simon, getting students to sign up as new members of our organization. While it seems kind of crazy for an environmental organization to be handing out tons of paper, people were actually reading the fliers and talking to us about the issues, which made me feel a bit better about the effort. (Aside: I thought it was kind of funny that Google didn't have some cartoon thing on its home page for Environment Day, but I couldn't find any way to contact them to complain. It seems as important as St Patty's Day or something that gets shamrocks for the O's in Google!)

Other things that are going on: our ongoing work to build up an ecotourism program - right now this involves a lot of planning for a new website, meetings with the tour group that we want to work with, and trying to make lots of new contacts in the ecotourism/community tourism world. We have a really great opportunity to provide an in-depth learning experience for tourists here while helping communities to make money via community tourism, which is seen as one of the last alternatives in many places to growing coca, which generally requires the deforestation of national parks, where many indigenous tribes live. Things are moving pretty slowly, which can be frustrating at times, but I'm hopeful that we can get together a great program.

Also last week a bunch of saw Pirates of the Caribbean - while it wasn't as great as the first one, it was certainly entertaining! Definitely a highlight of my week... This week there is a día feriado on Thursday (a national holiday), so one of the other volunteers, Erica, and I might try to go to Oruro for a few nights to sit in some hot springs and see a volcano. Anything to get out of the city soon. It might also generate some more pictures, since I haven't taken any in the past 2 weeks.

I'm finally getting to know my way around the city, and actually remember how much things should cost in the markets so I don't get ripped off (although it's sometimes hard to feel bad about giving someone a dollar instead of 80 cents...).