| Monday, June 26, 2006 |
| LAP...az |
Back in the highest capital city in the world. The visit was so short I almost didn't have time to catch my breath...literally. Tonight I head off to Cochabamba for the final stretch of my journey...here in La Paz I've been visiting with old friends, it hardly feels like traveling, it's almost like I've come back home. Even had a night at the Gota de Agua, my favourite nightclub here. HAH! I've been here so long I even have a favourite nightclub. Sent another package home today...my freaking third. WOW. This entry is very uneventful. Well, after Coche I'm going to Potosi again, then squeezing in a long-ass journey to Cuzco in a day or two, then finally to Lima (for like, a day) and then home. WOW!!! Blah blah blah. SEE YA!!!
EDIT: HOLEY HELL!!! I just saw possibly the funniest fucking video EVER. WATCH IT!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r7JHAqoZJs&search=gringo%20bolivia
The BEST part is that I've been to all of those places in the videos...so even if you guys don't understand the jokes (maybe you'd have to visit here to understand...but that is SUCH a typical freaking tourist idiot...) it'd at least be cool to see some places I've been to. CIAO! |
posted by Ben @ 9:53 AM  |
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| Wednesday, June 21, 2006 |
| HAY YAY YA BOLIVIA!!! |
WOW. All I can say is that the Aymara New Year festival was one of the best experiences of my trip, if not my whole freaking life. I ate some slightly dodgy salchipapas (french fries and hot dogs cut up) an hour or so before I left on the bus, so my stomache wasn't at it's prime, so I was a little late leaving, but caught a minibus to Tiwanaku, the town an hour out of La Paz with old old pre-Inca ruins. Met some guys on the mini bus (as well as that weeeeird liberal extremist dude from Coldorado that I talked to a few weeks ago...) and ended up spending most of the night with them. When we arrived at the main plaza the party had already started without us, with Kala Marca (the group I saw in Potosi) rocking the kasbah. EVERYONE was dancing and jumping around and smiling. I didn't feel like a tourist at all, everyone was so inclusive. After they played we hung around a bonfire for a while in the freezing freaking cold...and then walked to the ruins and froze our asses off waiting for the sun to rise. Evo Morales came via helicoptor and raised the Bolivian flag outside the ruins. As the sun finally came up everyone held their palms out to catch the rays of the new year sun, and it's said that by doing this you will be blessed by the Aymara sun god. Everyone took a few swigs of 96% alchohol and embraced each other and said "hay yay ya" which means something like "long live". For the next 2 hours or so folklore groups played music and everyone danced around in circles together.
When I returned to La Paz at 11:00 or so, I slept. Lots.
It was freaking awesome. |
| posted by Ben @ 3:49 PM |
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| Tuesday, June 20, 2006 |
| Back in La Paz |
| AGAIN!!! I'm back in La Paz now...it was really sad leaving Potosi and saying goodbye to Zelida and my other friends. Traveled on the (actually paved!!!) road all night and got into La Paz at 5:30 in the morning, where I promptly found a hotel room and fell fast asleep. Met up today with Patricica and Tanya, some of my buddies from a few months ago. Tomorrow I'm going to spend some time with some of my other old buddies from the start of my trip...it should be great. In just a little bit I'm off to the Aymara New Year festival, marked by the winter solstance, the shortest day of the year. It's the New Year because after tonight, the Sun will come back. Kala Marca, the cool bolivian folklore band that I saw in Potosi, are going to be playing in the morning, and some dude on the street told me that National Geographic is going to film the concert it in the morning!!! WOOHOO!! YEEEAH, I'LL BE THEEEERE!!! God, I have NO idea how I'm going to stay up all tonight and watch the sunrise with everyone else...hopefully there'll be someone selling coffee at Tiwanaku, and lots of it. |
| posted by Ben @ 6:51 PM |
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| Saturday, June 17, 2006 |
| Todavia soy de Potosi...CARAJO!!! |
| Ahhhh! I'm still here and I love it!!! I went to a concert the other night with my bud Zélida, and it was freaking awesome. After 2.5 hours of waiting (Bolivian time, you see) the concert started, it was in this big soccer field and there was about 2000 people there, I being the only tourist there. Bolivian folklore bands played there, as well as a dancing group from Tarija (the south of Bolivia). They have such a strong culture here in Bolivia, it's so freaking cool. "We in Bolivian, we're not poor, look at all this culture that we have!" said the lead singer of Kala Marca, a band from Bolivia. The audience cheered. Everyone was dancing and jumping along to the music, and there were people in cultural dress dancing in front of the stage as part of the performance. It was one of the coolest experiences of my trip so far. I'm going to go out and buy some Kala Marca CD's right now, actually!!! I have until Monday here in Potosi and then I sadly have to leave to La Paz...then to Cochabamba, and then maybe back to Potosi for a few more days. Because of my dumb visa I have until the 30th in Bolivia, and then I have to go to Peru. Less than a month left... |
| posted by Ben @ 9:24 AM |
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| Thursday, June 15, 2006 |
| Todavia en La Ciudad de Plata |
Hey hey hey changos (or "che" as they say here in Potosi, like in Argentina) I'm still in Potosi and having a great time. I've met a few more great people that I've been spending time with, most noticably a rockin Potosina girl named Zelida who I've spent many hours talking over coffee with (all in spanish! woohoo!!). Altitude's still getting to me but I'm continuing the chewing of coca, and all shall be well. I also met another Canadian girl named Naiobi (did I say that before already?) who's been volunteering at a daycare for poor family's kids...she goes back home in 2 weeks and it's crazy to think that I'm going to be there so soon. I've been learning a lot about freaking annoying gender and age roles here in South America, sooo soo soo strict. Adults say "Hola, como estas?" to younger people, but younger people must use the polite form of "usted" when refering to an adult. Guys and girls never hang out together without other people around, unless they're dating. Every freaking body is catholic. When Naiobi told her first host family that her mother is jewish, her host father refused to talk to her. Guys often have 2, 3, 4, or 5 girlfriends at a time, as it's the "macho" thing to do, and for this, it's also quite common for teenage girls (sometimes as young as 13 or 14) to be pregnant or have one or more kids, since most guys refuse to use condoms. I've bought more shit too, and my backpack's feeling the weight. I have until the 19th in Potosi and then I'm off to the Aymara New Year festival at Tiahuanacu, some pre-Inca ruins an hour out of La Paz. Should be great, and very very cold.
Ciao ciao. |
| posted by Ben @ 10:41 AM |
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| Friday, June 09, 2006 |
| Potosi, Potosi, yo soy de Potosi, CARAJO!!! |
| Hey hey changos. Still in Potosi. Met some Bolivian university students and I've been hanging out with them, excellent people. One's a dude named Chino and he's studying Quechua language and culture (quechua is a native language to South America) also Cecita who's studying languages, as well as Eva, also studying languages, and an argentinean artisan named Pedro. Also spent some time with the guide from my mine tour, Obed, who's an excellent dude. There's a big cultural festival tomorrow where all the university students dress up in cultural clothing and dance in the streets. They've been practicing over the past few days, it's really really neat to watch. I'm really happy to be hangin out with some Bolivians again!!! Really good people. I gotta go, ciao! I'll write about the festival later. |
| posted by Ben @ 10:12 AM |
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| Sunday, June 04, 2006 |
| I never thought I'd help sacrifice a llama... |
But the next thing I knew, I was holding a bloody severed llama penis. The old woman who had handed it to me laughed. I dropped the penis.
In case you are wondering why this happened, I did a mine tour yesterday. There weren't actually any miners in the mines, since it was a special festival where the miners sacrifice llamas as a gift to pachamama (mother earth). So me and two french dudes who I did the tour with ended up drinking beer and cutting up llamas with miners and their families. I got to hold a llama leg while they skinned it. They take the internal organs of the llamas, plus it's feet and head, and put it on a wheelbarrow and take it into the mine and leave it to pachamama, and they take the rest of the meet and have a big awesome barbeque at night. A llama costs about 400 bolivianos, and since the miners have to buy them themselves, the week beforehand they do double or triple shifts in the mines in order to save up enough money for the festival. The dude from the tour company that took us up there used to work in the mines. He worked there for 3 years. He started when he was 12 years old.
Met an Argentinean on the street last night...he introduced me to some of his friends and we ended up going to a karaoke bar until 4 in the morning. I sung a Gun's N Roses song that I had never heard before. On the list they SAID it was 'Welcome to the Jungle' but it turned out to be some song with the lyrics 'You could be miiiiine!' The bolivians gave me the heavy metal salute when I finished. It was awesome.
So, Im going to do another mine tour on Monday or Tuesday so I can actually see some miners working. They seem like really nice people, I enjoyed spending time with them yesterday.
There's a big weekend market in Potosi that's really neat too, and I've spent several hours wandering around there! Nowhere near as cool as the El Alto market though...that's uncontested. It's damn cold here in Potosi as well, like between-fall-and-winter weather in Canada. It kind of sucks.
Off to Topiza in a few days. Should be neat. Ciao pajeros. |
| posted by Ben @ 12:30 PM |
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| Friday, June 02, 2006 |
| Back on the coca, bugs in the arm... |
Last night I squeezed the swollen sack thing on my arm where, as the doctor says, an insect laid eggs in my arm several weeks ago when I was in Rurrenebaque. A bunch of pus and little black insect eggs oozed out. It was gross.
I'm in Potosi right now, formally one of the largest and most wealthy cities in the whole world. There are silver mines here that have been in use since the spanish conquest 500 years ago. The silver from the mines in Potosi supplied the colonial spanish economy with virtually all of it's silver, adorning the castles of the rich in Europe while millions of indigenous and african slaves were worked to death underground. The mines are still in use today, and tomorrow or the next day I am going to take a tour to the mines to visit with the workers there.
In other news, Peru heads to elections soon...the Chavez-endorsed left candidate is 4 percent behind the other guy...it'll be a close one! Buen suerte a ti, Ollanda! (good luck to you, Ollanda!)
I'm back on chewing coca, which I havn't done since I was in La Paz. Potosi is one of the highest cities in the world, and when you walk up stairs you feel like you're dying. It's quite hard to breathe. Coca, by the way, helps with oxygenating the blood, and it's really popular among the people who live in the altiplano here in Bolivia and other countries in South America...though only among the native people. The whites view chewing coca as a "dirty indian habit" (to quote my friends Ron and Diane) though they're happy to drink the tea. The bearucrats in Washington who are trying to eradicate coca cultivation in South America should come visit down here and try to fare without it.
Last night I spent 40 Bolivianos (about $5.50 CAD) on a hostel room. It was the most expensive room to date.
So, I'm probably going south next to Topiza and maybe Tarija, then likely via airplane to Cochabamba, where I might take some more spanish lessons. Then, on the 21st on June there's a big Aymara festival at some pre-Inca ruins close to La Paz, and I'll DEFINETLY be there. Then it's off to Peru for a week or two, including a trip to Macchu Picchu, and then finally...*gulp*...BACK HOME!!!
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| posted by Ben @ 11:38 AM |
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| Ben Martin's log of his 6-month journey to the South American Andean nation of Bolivia. |
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