Ally Abroad

I’ve finally started work, settled into some semblance of a routine and have a shaky understanding of what we’re doing.

Carnival is quickly approaching. Here in Cochabamba, that means only one thing: A gigantic, all-out, no-holds-barred, city-wide waterfight. It gets worse on the weekends and on especially sunny days.

It dosen’t matter where you are. Walking down the street, sitting in an open air cafe, or riding in a taxi with the window rolled down are all perils. Waterballons are lobbed out of car windows, super-soaker snipers perch on balconies, sometimes people simply dump buckets of water off of buildings. These shenanegans are not confined to children. Sometimes, a middleaged businessmen will have squirtgun up his suitsleeve or an elderly cholita will have waterballoons in the gigantic bundle she carries on her back.

Since I’m a young white woman, I might as well have a big bullseye painted on my back. It doesn’t matter if I’m dressed up or down, working on my laptop or reading a book, anytime and anywhere, I am a target. I get wet at least once, usually twice a day. I’ve been trying to develop my evil-eye, unfortunately to no avail. As such, I’m forced to arm myself before leaving the house every morning. Keys, check. Wallet, check. Cellphone, check. Change of clothes, check. Squirtgun, check. Such is the difficult life of Ally abroad.

Today, as in 2000, Cochabamba has chronic water shortages. Where I live we can go days without running water. In the outlying and rural areas people rely on periodic tanker trucks which sell water by the barrel, which is often recycled from rich peoples’ swimming pools or siphoned off of drainage ditches.

These water issues came to a head in 2000, when Cochabambinos made it clear that water is a basic human right and that they wouldn’t be bullied into the Washington Consensus by the World Bank or by multinational corporations, in what’s often referred to as the Water War.

To explain the issue, I’ll start with a little macroeconomics lesson:

Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, the result colonial pillage and centuries of political instability and strong-arming. The mineral extraction economy is boom and bust and is often subject to hyperinflation. The government is highly indebted and often unable to provide the most basic services to its people. As such, Bolivia is at the mercy of the World Bank and the International Monetary fund.

The World Bank and IMF subscribe to neo-liberalism, a school of though which sees the market as a panacea for all development issues. They tend to privileges economic development over all else. Thus, social spending should be cut so that debts can be repaid more quickly and currencies should be devalued to stabilize the economy, at society’s expense. They also assume that what benefits developed nations will automatically benefit the developing nations they invest in. Thus, trade should be liberalized and the market deregulated so that developed nations have easy access to the markets in which they have advantages without the hindrance of labor and environmental laws. Finally, they believe that anything government can do, business can do better. Thus, all public services should be privatized, even if that means not everyone will have access.

The World Bank and IMF force poor nations to implement these neo-liberal reforms. They condition loans, development dollars and debt relief on so-called Structural Adjustment Policies. The policies are a package of austerity measures, currency devaluation, trade liberalization, deregulation, a focus on direct export and resource extraction, privatization and governance policies. While these policies can be helpful, they are usually more helpful to developed nations than developing nations, and they are often hurtful.

In Bolivia the cornerstone of structural adjustment has been privatization. The hydrocarbon, telephone, airlines and railways industries were quickly bought-off, the nation’s assets sold away at bargain basement prices. Water was less lucrative. When Cochabamba’s water rights went up for auction there was only one bidder. Water privatization was a condition of a much needed $25 million World Bank loan, so Bolivia was forced to accept the offer.

The buyer was Aguas de Tunari, coalition which included US corporation Bechtel. President Hugo Banzer signed a $2.5 billion, 40-year concession with a guaranteed minimum 15% annual return on the investment. The conditions of the concession required Aguas de Tunari to pay down water authority’s debt, expand and improve the existing water system, and finance the Misicuni dam project. The Misicuni dam project was, by all accounts, impractical, uneconomic and only beneficial to Banker’s wealthy backers, including the corrupt mayor of Cochabamba, Manfred Reyes Villa.

The concession and the corresponding Law 2029 gave Aguas de Tunari a monopoly over all water and sanitation in Cochabamba, including campesinos’ irrigation systems, communally built water networks and rainwater collection schemes. Aguas de Tunari was allowed to install water meters on wells residents had dug, charging them for the meters and the water. They quickly raised rates 35%, to about $20 a month. Minimum wage here, which most Bolivians don’t make, is $70 a month, so the hike was a huge burden.

Local residents organized, led by Oscar Olivera of La Coordinadora and Omar Fernandez of FEDECOR. When the government refused to recognize them and their popular referendum against Aguas de Tunari they began protesting. Retired and laid off miners and factory workers, lustrebotes, street vendors, university students, the middle class, cholitas, campesinos, cocaleros and just about everyone else in Cochabamba was involved in a four day general strike. Other protests broke out across the nation, and at one point there were blockades in five of the nine providences and a thousand-person march to La Paz (in a nation of only eight million).

In response President Banzer declared a state of siege, the Bolivian equivalent of martial law. Meetings of more than four people were prohibited, freedom of the press severely limited, and many of the opposition leaders arrested and sent to prisons in the Amazon region. The situation escalated, protesters and police exchanged rubber bullets, tear gas and molotov cocktails, there were hundreds of injuries and five deaths. In one case, which was caught on tape, an army captain fired into an unarmed crowd of demonstrators, killing high school student Víctor Hugo Daza.

After Daza’s death, the political situation became so unstable that the Aguas de Tunari executives were forced to flee the country. Desperate to change the laws in contention and end the strikes, the government rented planes to fly a quorum of delegates back to the capital. Water rights were turned over to La Coordinadora and Olivera declared victory for the people of Cochabamba.

Arguing that they had been forced out, Aguas de Tunari eventually filed a $40 million lawsuit with the WTO claiming compensation for lost profits. In 2006, the lawsuit was dropped. Banzer and the army perpetrators have not been brought to justice for their human rights violations. The water situation here has not improved at all. It’s still expensive, dirty and chronically unavailable.

Still, the water war was an incredible success. People here are proud that they stood up to a gigantic corporation and said no to neo-liberalism. Rightfully so. Bolivia stands as an early example of the other option, the possibilities outside of the Washington consensus. Bolivia is slowly but surely paying off their enormous debt, diversifying and expanding their economy, trying to protect human rights, foster an independent identity and act sustainably at the same time. They’re not alone. Today Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba stand with them and against neo-liberal imperialism.

This mural says “Bolivia is not in play.” I walk by it everyday, and it always makes me proud to be here.

After a long and arduous journey which included a no blockade dance, bidding on sold-out bus tickets, sleeping on the stranger in the next seat and a midnight snowstorm, I’ve finally arrived in Cochabamba.

I am so happy to be here. While there aren’t really any tourist attractions, there is warm weather and friendly faces, which is exactly what I wanted after cold, gray and conservative La Paz.

Cochabamba has a mild Mediterranean climate and a bright blue sky, only occasionally obscured by instantaneous and torrential downpours. The plazas are filled with park benches, ice cream sellers and shoeshine boys, shaded by palm trees and bordered by lovely Baroque churches. The Prado is lined with open air cafes, perfect for lingering over Cochabamba’s famous cuisine and taking a parade of Caporales dancers, which are almost constant in the run-up to Carnaval.

Cochabama is Bolivia’s breadbasket. When the Incas invaded from Peru, they were quick to colonize the fertile valley, so the people here are Quechua, as opposed to the Aymara of La Paz and the Altiplano. The indigenous women wear short velvet polleras, sandals, and wide-brimmed straw hats, adding to the air of eternal spring. Moreover, the Cochabambinos seem to be far more open than their highland counterparts. People are always happy to stop and chat, wanting to know who I am and why I’m here. I’m even a little relieved that the catcalls have resumed.

The openness suprises me, because there are an incredible number of gringoes here, some of them incompetent peace corps kids and others overzealous missionaries. At the same time, I must admit, there are some alright faithful folk. As it turns out, I’m living with two Maryknoll missioner boys, Jason and Steve.

We live in a barrio to the south of town, opposite the lovely Lauguna Alalay, which is Quechua for “Oh, cold!” There are stone-cobbled streets overgrown with weeds, walls covered with graffiti murals and plenty of parks for pick-up futbol matches. Evo Morales has a house a few blocks away. Our house is ‘medidas aguas’ which means that all the rooms open out onto the patio, forcing you to run through the rain and dodge the crazy annoying dogs to go to the bathroom or kitchen. But, between the showerhead shorting out and the pilot light of death, the kitchen and bathroom are somewhat scary. Fortunately my room is bright and airy, and I’m planning to paint it soon.

This gigantic statute, Christo de la Concordia, overlooks the city. At 33m plus it’s a hair higher than the Rio de Janerio statue it’s modeled after. While display of one upmanship and evangelism would normally annoy me to no end, it orients me when I get lost, so I’ve forgiven it.

Today, continuing my death-tourism stint, I tried to visit the infamous San Pedro prison. San Pedro used to have a brusque tourism business, but visits were called off after few too many tourists were caught buying cocaine. In order to visit, I had to have an inmate to visit and official permission.

Sebastian, a Dutch tourist awaiting trial on cocaine charges, and a friend of a friend, invited me to visit him. Unfortunately, I was unable to obtain official permission to visit him. Apparently, Sebastian was on some sort of probation, I was suspicious because I was white, and the person I needed to bribe was away on other business.

Instead, the guards let me stand at the gate and talk to Sebastian. Being a white woman and bearing a carton of cigarettes, a bag of chocolates and bars of soap, the inmates clamoured at the iron gate to talk to and touch me. The majority of the men I met were awaiting trial, almost all of them on drug charges. Some of them have been stuck in the stalled judicial system for years.

Inside the prison there are no guards, no uniforms and no real rules. The 1,500 or so prisoners must resolve disputes among themselves. They organize into unions and elect leaders. The prisoners are also quite political. Posters of Evo adorn all of the walls, and candidates campaign inside the prison. Problems that can’t be resolved peaceably are usually settled with knife fights. Prisoners accused of commiting particularly heinous crimes are often killed in vigilante violence. There are an average of four deaths, from ‘accidents’ and natural causes, each month.

San Pedro is divided into eight separate barrios, each centered its own patio. Some areas are better than others, and each has a hotel-style star rating. While wealthy inmates can buy or rent cells, poorer inmates sleep on crowded corridor floors. Towards the top of the prison, the cells are quite swank, complete with kitchens and bathrooms. One drug-baron, caught with $420 million worth of cocaine, had a second story built onto his cell. On the first floor, the cells are unsafe, with violence, vermin and diseases running rampant.

To supplement their meager rations, improve their cells and survive the prisoners must earn money. The prison is like a little city, with food stalls, repair shops, shoeshine boys, barbers, billiard halls and everything else you could want. However, the two biggest businesses in San Pedro are distractions from the difficult life: drink and drugs and soccer. Contraband substances seem to flow freely through the prison, the officials easily paid-off. There are cocaine laboratories in some of the cells. Apparently, it is so lucrative that many of the San Pedro guards pay for their postings. Soccer is almost equally important. Coca-cola sponsors the teams, in exchange for exclusive sales in the prison. On big games single bets can reach $1000. Sometimes, players are even scouted out by the wealthier sections.

Family members can come and go freely and some children live in the prison. There are so many of them, San Pedro has its own school. Without other relatives, the children don’t have any options. They offer suffer abuse, and are always stigmatized. However, as one father explained to me, they do their best to shield their kids from the violence and shame, and they are able to provide some stability and normality because they stay together as a family.

The San Pedro prison was an incredibly interesting and ironic place, a microcosm of Bolivian society. The majority of inmates are indigenous, there’s an astonishing divide between rich and poor, and almost everyone is there as a result the War on Drugs. Although I’m glad I visited, I don’t think I’ve ever cried so hard as I did on the cab ride home.

For more information and some excellent photos of the inside check out this BBC article and the Marching Powder website.

This weekend Tracy and I were determined to get out of the city. We got up at dawn on Saturday morning and slogged up to the bus terminal, aiming for Sorata, a town a few hours north. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the bus station it was closed. There was a blockade. That’s how Bolivians protest. There are so few avenues to power and little access to political infuence, people feel so disenfranchised, that they are forced to drag rocks, trees, old cars, burning tires, and so on and so forth into the streets, blocking all traffic from one part of the country to another and effectively paralyzing it.

Apparently, some Bolivian bus drivers are upset at the aptly named Seguro Obligatorio de Accidentes de Tránsito, or SOAT, an annual transit tax. Actually, all of a sudden, Bolivians seem to be upset about everything. Now that Christmas is over, the population of La Paz seems to have doubled, doubled their pace and doubled their grudges. This morning there were three dozen riot cops supervising the demolition of one of the municipal markets, a la the occupied territories. This evening there was a small protest in Plaza San Francisco. I stopped to watch and listen. A small group of indigenous people were stumping for the controversial new constitution and against the Media Luna autonomy movement.

A bit of background:

Santa Cruz and the rest of the Eastern lowlands, collectively called the Media Luna, consisting of the Beni, Pando, Tarija and Santa Cruz are culturally distinct from the rest of Bolivia. They tend to be whiter and more western than other Bolivians. Without exception, those that I’ve spoken to have been very kind to me, but utterly and unapologetically bigoted, refering to indigenous people as dirty Indians, swine, and a multitude of other unspeakable things. Unfortunately, these people also control much of the wealth and want to keep it to themselves. In recent years, government revenue has shifted from mineral extration, centered in the Altiplano West, to hydrocarbon extraction, agrobuisnesses and cattle ranching, centered in the Lowland East. So Santa Cruz and the Media Luna have begun rumbling about autonomy, if not outright succession.

On the other hand, Evo Morales campaigned promising a new constitution, one that would concentrate more power in the hands of the poor indigenous majority, concentrated in the Western Altiplano, instead of the whiter, wealthier minorty, concentrated in the Eastern Lowlands. After he was elected he conviened a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. Unfortunately the opposition, unhappy with the proportional representation system, boycotted the assembly until the last minute. As a result, the legitamacy of the new constitution is in limbo. This is unfortunate, because it’s incredbily progressive, focusing on health and education, increasing indigenous participation in government, redistributing hydrocarbon revenues and idle land, reducing the influence of the church and allowing gay marriage, while concentrating a little more power in the hands of the central government.

The political tension over natural resource revenues is mixing with racial tension and Evo Morales’ election and constituent assembly is accentuating it, creating an incredibly explosive situation. The opposition has also begun attacking MASista representatives, preventing them from attending the constituent assembly.Youth gangs, called the Juventud Cruceñista, roam the streets of Santa Cruz beating up Cholitas. A few weeks before I arrived a sometimes revolutionary highland group called Los Ponchos Rojos killed and mutilated a pair of dogs on national TV, as a warning to the Media Luna. People are angry and afraid, and there have been a lot of attacks on individuals.

The speaker was standing under a Whipala, an indigenous flag. I thought it was interesting, and I snapped this photo. Oh, what an error. Immediately, I was surrounded by a gaggle of angry indigenous people, yelling in an unintelligible mix of Aymara and Spanish. “Where are you from?” one of them demanded. “Are you a journalist?” another asked. I explained myself, showing them my passport and pictures, taking care to emphasize my differences with our president and my support for theirs. Once they were sure I was an ally, they were actually quite kind, explaining their positions and posing for pictures. (Apologies for the pun). Apparently, because I was white, they originally thought that I was from Santa Cruz. Had I been, I have no doubt that they would have beaten me senseless and bloody.

All’s well that end’s well and I have learned an important lesson about the liabilities of white skin. Plus, if I’m going to get lynched for a photo, it should be a better one than this.

Many indigenous women in La Paz, called cholas and cholitas, have adopted a particularly unique and now ubiquitous costume. It was originally imposed by seventeenth-century Spanish governors, but today it’s a fashion, an identity and an outward display of wealth.

The women wear polleras, or gigantic petticoat skirts which emphasize the width of their hips. Over the pollera they wear lacy blouses and colorful shawls, often accented with sequins and fringe. Under the pollera they wear knee-high lace-up boots, or flat slippers. My favorite part are bowler hats, pinned at a jaunty angle over a pair of braids. It’s unclear how they came into vouge. Some people say that a businessman imported too many and convinced the Cholitas that is was the latest Spanish fashion.

In general, traditional fabrics have been eschewed by indigenous women in the city as the mark of campesinas and tourist tat. However, I did meet this Cholita spinning in the street, and she told me a little bit about her trade and let me take her picture, which was a rare treat.

She was working with alpaca wool, which is prized over that sheep and llama, but below vicuña wool. She was pulling out clumps of wool, rolling them between the fingers of their right hand and on to a spindle that they keep moving with their left hand in one seamless motion. For everyday threads the spindle is spun counterclockwise. For ceremonial and special threads the spindle is spun clockwise. Eventually, she’ll dye the wool with plants and minerals and weave it on a backstrap loom, as she has since she was a teenager and as her grandmothers for generations before her did.

Then she’ll sell it for a fraction of what it’s worth to tourists who have no idea the back-breaking, blinding work and hundreds of hours that go into their souvenirs. Gotta love capitalism.

Today I paid a visit to the Museo de Instrumentos Musicales. While there is plenty of Bolivian guacarock, reggeton, ranchera, cumbia, nueva canción and etc., Bolivia has retained an incredibly rich folk music tradition with all sorts of instruments of their own invention.

We saw lots of charangoes, tiny guitars adapted from Spanish lutes and mandolins. However, charangoes are traditionally constructed out of armadillo shells. There are a few explanations for the unconventional soundbox selection. Some people say that Andean musicians liked the sounds of the Spanish instruments, but could not bend wood into the appropriate shapes and had to use armadillo shells. Others say that the Spanish prohibited Andean music, and that the charango was created because it was easily hidden. We also saw tortoise shell and more conventional carved wood charangoes. Charangoes usually have ten strings, requiring incredibly nimble and slender fingers. They appear and are tuned a little like an ukulele, but is played more like a banjo, and sounds completely different than either. All the strings are tuned inside a single octave, so it creates very full and sustained sound.

We also saw zampoñas, the panpipes so often associated with Andean music. They’re usually made from bamboo tubes of varying lengths. Some zampoñas are taller than the tiny musicians who play them! Pieces of dried corn, or pebbles, are placed in the bottom of the pipes to precision tune them. The pipes are split into two rows, called the ira and the arka, which symbolize the male and female, and together form a full scale. Traditionally, two people play the zampoñas together, but today one musician is more common.

Finally, there were plenty of quenas. Quenas are bamboo flutes played by pinching the top of the tube with your lower lip, and blowing downwards, as I imagine a beaver would. Pinquillo, tarkas, and moseños are similar variants. Other distinctively Andean instruments include the pututu, a ram’s horn, chajchas, a shaker made of goat, llama or sheep toes, and every imaginable size and shape of drum and rattle.

The museum also had a huge collection of non-Bolivian instruments. My favorite was this Peruvian ocarina. Then there were also homemade instruments, including a guitar made out of a spam can, and an exhibit explaining the tin can telephone. Finally, there were some instruments that I can only imagine came from a Dr. Seuss book.

The EMP has absolutely nothing on this museum. They had way more instruments, cooler instruments, tons of stuff to touch and play with. The EMP’s only advantage is its amazingly ugly building. Not to be outdone, the Museo had blueprints of charago shaped edifice on display. If only Paul Allen had an interest in armadillo guitar shaped buildings.

Unlike Christmas, New Year’s Eve celebrations appear to be exactly the same in all parts. Stay up late, get silly drunk. Bolivians generally begin the festivities at midnight, and continue with the drinking and dancing until 6am or so. Paul, Tracy and I weren’t up that much celebrating, so we started a little earlier and went for a more conventional pub crawl.

However, the pub crawl quickly turned into a drunk-girls-in-high-heels-on-cobblestones-can’t-find-a-cab-stumble across the city. After a few close calls with me looking up at the lovely holiday lights instead of what was in front of me, oncoming traffic and children with homemade fireworks, we decided to settle on a single club.

At midnight we ended up at Ram Jam, which was apparently the hot place to be, both literally and figuratively. As someone said, if Bolivia had a Paris Hilton, she would have been there. The place was packed with a mix young of foreigners and paceños, in all sorts of bizarre fashions, shaking it to 70s and 80s pop hits. The Bolivians were almost astoundingly drunk, and yet still standing, singing and dancing through the entire evening. There were party hats, noise makers, and streamers that we accidentally caught on fire with a candle. Plus, in a truly ridiculous turn of events we ended up dancing on a raised stage for the local television news.

And despite the incredible, high-altitude hangover that ensued, this New Years, I resolve to take myself and everything a little less seriously, and to let my adventure unfold one day at a time.

The town at the end of the World’s Most Dangerous Road came highly recommended, both at home and in Bolivia. Called Coroico, it is as close as Bolivia has to a resort town.

It’s set on a hillside above a beautiful lush Yungas valley. Below you can see a river, lined with coffee, banana, citrus and coca plantations. Compared to the cold of La Paz, it’s the perfect temperature, always around eighty degrees. The square is filled with palm trees, park benches and people selling snacks, making it the perfect place to relax. A short walk along the cobbled streets takes you outside of town and to all sorts of little establishments where you can dine al fresco, overlooking the valley, on all sorts of amazing local and organic food (my favorite being the homemade coffee ice cream).

Coroico was full of Bolivian families on holiday, swimming, playing soccer, chatting and hanging out. There weren’t many other tourists about, so I was left to my own devices. The town boasts hiking, rafting and horseback riding, but I was feeling super lazy, so I spent most of my time relaxing by the pool, reading the last Harry Potter. (Although, to my credit, it is in Spanish). I also got a wicked sunburn and all sorts of itchy insect bites, but such is life.

Coroico was also interesting because it had black people. In this culture, black people are uncommon and a sign of good luck. Apparently, the Afro-Bolivianos are the ancestors of slaves brought over to work the mines. When mining production dropped the slaves were sent to the Yungas to grow coca, where their natural resistance to malaria gave them an advantage. They stayed after slavery was abolished in the 1850s, continuing their farming lifestyle. There are some 35,000 of them in Bolivia, most all of them in the Yungas. While they’ve adopted the Aymara customs and language, they have generally avoided intermarriage with the larger Aymara population. Their subculture also retains distinctly African elements, like plenty of attitude and openness (this family even invited me to take their picture), plus very soulful, rhythmic song and dance. However, not all of the Afro-Bolivianos know of their origins, let alone the existence of the African continent. When I asked one woman if she wanted to visit Africa she asked me where it was!

Attention Familiars: This may upset some of you. My apologies. You know me. Anything named the World’s Most Dangerous Something has an unshakeable appeal. Plus, in addition to being the World’s Most Dangerous Road, it’s probably the world’s most beautiful. I couldn’t help myself.

Unlike many Latin American nations, Bolivia celebrates Christmas in a big way. The malls are full of wealthy people, while the plazas are filled with makeshift market stalls selling every imaginable bit of Christmas kitsch. Tinny music, tons of blinking lights, tiny nativities, and Western-style Christmas trees are everywhere. Christmas centers on the Nochebuena, or Christmas Eve. Families stay up until midnight to attend mass, toast the birth of Christ, eat dinner and exchange gifts.

My family didn’t attend mass, but there is the Misa del Gallo, so-named because a rooster was supposedly one of the first creatures to witness baby Jesus’ birth. In some towns, especially Sucre, baby Jesus is carried around town, with everyone dancing, carolling and generally adoring him.

For dinner Bolivians have picana, a special holiday soup with a spicy white wine broth and hunks of corn on the cob, whole potatoes, and chunks of lamb, chicken and beef. We also had encholata, a stomach churning solution of beer and coca cola. With the food, the alcohol and the hour I ended up falling asleep before either of the kids.

Gift giving here is straightforward. Adults give children gifts, but don’t really exchange among themselves. While they’re opened at midnight and all the squealing is in Spanish, the flurry of excitement and flying paper is exactly the same as at home. I made my family a basket of wine, chocolate, nuts and cheese, including some swiss cheese, which confused my abuelita to no end.

Christmas day is a more subdued affair. Some families attend mass a second time, but we were having none of that. Instead, we slept late, ate leftover picana for lunch, and then relaxed around the house. Because we live in Zona Sur we’re at a significantly lower altitude than La Paz proper and we had wonderful weather today. It was about eighty degrees outside, and we sat in the garden and talked politics and economics while the kids rode their new bikes around us.

Festivities continue through New Years and until the 8th, El Dia de los Tres Reyes Magos, when the wise men come and it’s time to put away the tree and nativity and start making good on those resolutions.

Feliz navidad, próspero año y felicidad a todos. I miss and love you all and I hope you’re having a merry Christmas. Know that I’m happy and healthy and all the rest.

We woke early on the second day of the trek, anxious for and early start, food and clean water. We had reached the edge of the yungas the night before, but today the trail plunged downwards and into the steamy swale below.

As we descended it got warmer and more humid by the minute. The vegetation grew taller and more verdant and the wildlife more abundant. The air had a sweet floral scent, with eucalyptus trees abounding. Bird and cicada sounds competed with the roaring river below us. The Precolombian paving disappeared, overgrown by the flourishing foliage.

We wound up and down the mountain sides, in and out of the river valleys. When we crossed the Rio Takesi for the last time, over a dam, we began hiking along this aqueduct. We had beautiful vistas out over the lush subtropical landscape, down the river and into town.

We hiked though a gold mining camp called Chojilla. It was astounding to see the rape of the landscape; the bright green turned a dingy brown, a sulphur smell permeating everything and dirty water draining into the river. Look for another entry on the effects of mining sometime soon.

After Mina Chojilla we continued on to the tranquil little town of Yanacachi. In Yanacachi, everyone was out and about in their Sunday best. There weren’t any busses running from Yanacachi but some of the local kids offered to show us a shortcut the highway. They lead us down a footpath out of town, through their families’ banana, coffee and coca fields, peppering me with questions about the States, Santa Claus, and my sunburn, which made me look somewhat like Rudolph myself.

When we reached the highway, we flagged down a bus headed for La Paz. The drive back felt like an extension of the hike, an exposed dirt track, winding around the mountains, with cliffs and gorges extending thousands of feet above and below us. An extension of the hike, except that we were speeding down the hill at 100kph, able to smell the brakes. Imagine my surprise when I learned that we weren’t on the world’s most dangerous road. That’s next weekend’s adventure.

This weekend I was determined to get out and explore Bolivia. As it is Christmastime there aren’t a lot of other tourists around. It’s a blessing, since you get the sights to yourself, but it’s also a curse, since there aren’t any organized tours. I ended up hiring a private guide to take on the Takesi trek. The two-day trek links the highland altiplano with the lowland yungas through a low pass in the majestic Cordillera Real mountain range.

The owner of the trekking company drove us up to the trailhead on Saturday morning. We got stopped on the way there, outside of the town of Ventilla. I know this sounds silly, but I was really excited to see my first Bolivian roadblock. However, in reality, it was road construction. There was one fellow standing in a ditch, chucking stones into a wheelbarrow, while another one laid them up on the road, using the same strategy the Inca had hundreds of years before.

We began trekking off of an access road for Mina San Francisco, where wolfram and tin are extracted. The rocky trail climbed steeply, and at altitude, I was quickly exhausted. The only respite was the short distance to the summit. As we rounded the last switchback to the 4600m Apachetas Pass a gigantic ornate iron cross came into view. It was so ironic, because all I felt like doing was falling to my knees and begging for more oxygen.

Unfortunately, there was no reprieve after the pass. Instead, there was an absolute whiteout on the other side. So instead of resting, we began running. Eventually the snow turned to rain, and then to sunny skies, and we slowed down. I found myself in some of the most breathtaking countryside I have ever seen. We were in a valley with steep, smooth, stone walls on either side. Waterfalls ran down the rock faces and into a little river that wound down the basin the basin. Everything was a bright emerald green, accented with splashes of gold groundcover, and it was amazingly lush for the altitude.

Equally as amazing as the surrounds was the road. We were walking along a Precolombian paving, constructed by the Incas. The trail was a vital economic and political link between the altiplano and Yungas. It’s one of a number of such trails, which archaeologists believe may have been linked La Paz and the Beni at one time. Indigenous highlanders still use the trail for everyday transport, and we passed a number of them on their way to La Paz for the holiday. The road was perfectly paved, often accompanied by culverts and low stone walls. It was awe inspiring to see such engineering and effort, and the way it has lasted. However, the Inca were not so concerned with ADA accessibility. The cobbles were super slippery and I did a lot of falling down.

We walked through huge herds of llama and sheep. I was extremely excited for the animals, and insisted on stopping to take pictures of every last baby llama. This irked my guide to no end. The livestock belonged to the residents of Estancia Takesi. The town consisted of a dozen or so small stone huts with thatched roofs and stone enclosures for the llamas and sheep. Most of the buildings had been co-opted from the original construction, by the Incas, if not earlier. It certainly created a sense of history to see structures inhabited continuously for the last half-century.

We hiked out of the highlands, and down into the yungas. (More on that in the next entry.) The trail traversed around the Loma Pali Pali, high above a river gorge. We stopped to camp in Estancia Kakapi. Normally, there are a number of basic alojomientos in the village, but it being Christmastime, the town was closed. Everyone had gone to La Paz for the holiday and there was not a soul in sight. Just vicious dogs that we fended off with sticks and a sad little donkey. We found a level spot, set up our tents and got out the stove to make supper.

It was at this point that my guide realized that he had forgotten matches. We had no way to light the stoves, cook dinner, or breakfast, or, most importantly, purify water. Instead, we had the crusty bread that I had been carrying, and water from the Rio Takesi below. And while drinking out of the river was beautiful and picturesque, I’m not as excited for the giardia that I probably got. Check back soon for an update on the state of my stomach!

For this afternoon’s adventure, I went to the Mercado de Hechiceria, or Witches’ Market. Innocuously tucked into a couple of back calles, you would never guess the mysteries that abound. It’s an absolute cornocopia of magical items. Tiny stalls and shops overflow with herbs, sweets, incense, candles, liquor, talismans, tiny colourful trinkets and all manner of animal products and parts.

Traditional healers called Yatiris put assorted items and animal parts appropriate for each situation into packages called pagos. They bless the package and then burn or bury it as offering to one of the many spirits and ancestors in the Aymara cosmology. Pachamama, the earth mother, and Ekeko, the household god of abundance, are particularly popular patrons. You can ask for luck, protection or a cure for any sort of ailment, physical or spiritual. The lama fetuses pictured here are usually buried under new construction to bless the house.

The Yatiris also tell fortunes by through coca leaves. While the fellow I met would not tell my fortune, he explained a little bit about what he was doing for a few Bolivianos. The Yatiri spreads a handful of leaves out on a sheet and divides them into four quadrants. They represent the past, the future, the world above and the world below. Based on their position and distribution, the Yatiri divines your fate.

There is plenty of real medicine mixed in with the magic and the line between the two blurs. The stall keeper I was chatting with offered all sorts of herbal remedies for everything from headaches to getting pregnant. I eventually settled for a tiny bottle of charms, which are supposed to keep me safe from automobile accidents.