High Times: La Paz

La Paz. The highest capital city in the world. I have been here for nearly two weeks now. Usually, tourists get stuck here because of Bolivia´s notorious roadblocks. But Tash and I are stuck here because we can´t bring ourselves to leave.

We arrived on the 9th January, and immediately began our customary exploration of the town on foot. I had been before, in 2005, and not much has changed. There is less litter, less visible poverty, less strange smells, and more tourists. We soon bumped into two friends we met on the farm where we worked in Argentina, who informed us of a very good, cheap alojamiento (very basic hostel) only two blocks from our expensive, draughty place. So, we changed hostels, and we are still here!

So, for the last week or so, we have been based in the ominous sounding, but completely harmless Witches Market. The witches are a nice bunch actually. A few of them look like centuries old hags, and they are very brash and sometimes downright rude to foreigners, but I like them. One sold me a bag full of leaves from the forest to help with a sore throat I had, and, despite my scepticism, it worked! (Or maybe it was the antibiotics Maria, our hostel owner, gave me?)

On Friday night, we went to a peña in a cobbled street that has been standing since the 1700s. I was nervous, as the audience looked upmarket and old aged, and I felt ridiculously underdressed, but as soon as the lights went down, and the party started it was brilliant.

A peña is essentially a working men´s club for Bolivians, except the entertainment is good. We were treated to traditional dances from all over Bolivia, including one in which a man dressed as a giant devil did battle with a camp-looking angel. The angel won unfortunately.

Then, once the dancing stopped, on came Pepe Murillo and his Bolivians. Pepe is a charango (like a ukulele) player who knows how to work a crowd. He looked like a cross between Adrien Brody and The Fonz, and, after asking everyone in the audience where they were from, he and his band would play a song from that country. He amazingly sang in Japanese and German, and his bassist played a killer rock´n´roll bassline by Bill Haley and The Comets. No surprises who they chose to cover when we said we were from England! (you guessed it, Los Beatles) After Pepe had wrapped up with some Latin American classics, I thought the show was over. But, never!

People coming from Bolivia into Argentina always talked about how they despised the food here. In fact, they launched so much invective at bolivian cuisine I was worried I might actually become thin when I came here. But, they lie! The food here is absolutely...adequate.You can get a decent meal in a restaurant for about a fiver, or go for cheap eats, on the street or with a traditional almuerzo. Almuerzo (lunch) in La Paz is a three course carbrohydrate bonanza. After the starter soup, which always contains potatoes, rice or pasta, some floating vegetables and a bone, what´s for mains? Potatoes, rice, pasta? How about all three, accompanied with a big piece of fried chicken? But, for between 50 - 80 pence, you can´t complain. In fact, I love it! What lets the almuerzo down is the postre (dessert). Usually chocolate that looks (and tastes) like another brown sticky substance, or, my favourite, a banana with a dollop of marmalade. Yum! I usually skip dessert.

The alternative to almuerzo is the street food, which is greasy, cheap, ridden with diseases, and delicious. You can get salteñas (like chicken pasties) for breakfast, burgers for lunch and empañadas (like beef pasties!) for dinner; all three for ten shiny Bolivianos. (one shiny pound)

The other day Maria took us to the market in El Alto. El Alto (literally - high) is the city above La Paz, on a high plateau at the head of the valley that La Paz spills down. Walking around the market, led by a 4" Bolivian, we four gringos (we went with samson and Merlin, our friends from the farm) stood out like four sore thumbs. There were no other gringos for miles, and we were sandwiched into narrow alleyways. I was sure a pickpocket was going to relieve me of my wallet. Sure enough, an old man "accidentally" spilled dirt on my backpack. I knew this was a distraction, so reached for my pocket. Someone elses hand was trying to furtively weasel his way in there! I yanked the thief´s hand away and started yelling "F Off" in the angriest, scariest Spanish voice I could muster. When we got out of the crowd, my hand practically glued to my pocket, I checked my backpack. All present and correct. They had tried to steal from Merlin´s bacpack as well, but everyone knows you can´t steal from a wizard. It´s impossible. Despite nothing being taken, Maria was very upset, and ashamed of her countrymen.

But, other than the near-robbery, the market was brilliant. Without Maria to lead us through the labyrinthine maze of streets, we would have become very, very lost. They had 4 streets of mobile phones, about 5 city blocks crammed with clothes (all genuine designer of course), you could purchase puppies if you so desire, chickens, (dead or alive) car parts, flags, police uniforms, TVs, buttons, amplifiers, cheese, llama wool, llama foetus, llama jumpers or llama meat. Anything! It was a hectic, chaotic place. Like a giant Argos superstore with no rules, and a million checkouts. Madness.

We have been culture vultures in La Paz too. It´s not all greasy food and crime fighting! We went to the excellent National Art Museum, which displayed works by Bolivia´s Indigenous Movement, who, instead of placing light bulbs on the floor, chopping sharks in half or flinging poo at the ceiling, make real art that says something.

There are many more tales to come from La Paz, but for now, I´m off to haggle with a witch about a llama foetus.

La Paz - Me Encanta

Bolivia: Counting Condors.

The Condor. It is, essentially, a big vulture. It is, therefore, an ugly bird. Its head is bald, and its beak hooked, so it can rummage through the carcasses of fallen animals without blood congealing on its feathers. However, when I use the word big, read, absolutely bloody huge. Yes, it is the size of the bird that makes it magnificent, and beautiful.

The first Condor we saw was with Rufo, when we were doing the Che Guevara tour (blog on that coming soon!) In the distance we saw a bird, gliding on unseen thermals. To my untrained eye it seemed like any other bird of prey. Elegant and menacing on the wind. But Rufo knew it was a Condor. We had been driving down a perilous, cliff hugging stretch of road, with Rufo cautiously guiding the 4x4. As soon as he saw the bird though, he threw caution off the cliff, and accelerated to a speed that nearly changed the colour of my pants. The condor was descending, and Rufo wanted to race it to get a good view. I would like to see a condor, I thought, as we sped around a tight hairpin bend, but I would also like to survive. When I tried to voice my thoughts, however, they came out in nothing but a whimper. When we got to the point where the bird should have been, we saw the last of it's tail feathers float behind a wall of rock.

Three days later, we were off with Rufo again, this time with the sole purpose of seeing condors. It was our third tour with the great "gordito (chubby)" guide, and this time we had an Australian couple, a Mexican, an American and a highly irritating German girl in tow.

It was a 4 hour trek across a ridge, up steep hills that Rufo, in the traditional Bolivian manner, assured us were "slight inclines." (It is a strange quirk with Bolivians, that distances and measurements seem to mean nothing to them. They are not trying to annoy or fool you when they say the shop is 5 minutes away, and 2 hours later you're gasping for water in the peaks of the Andes. They just measure things in their own, speecial way. Similarly, if you ask a Bolivian for directions, they will give you them, whether they know where your intended dedstination is or not. So, you have to ask half a dozen people the same question, and cross reference the answers!)
The walk, however, was beautiful. Every dozen metres you climbed, the landscape seemed to change, becoming less green, more harsh. Eventually, we got to our vantage point. On a narrow ledge, we looked down to a small rock escarpment, a hundred metres below. A waterfall plunged over the edge, and huddled around the rocks were the birds.

The place Rufo led us to was like an airport for Andean Condors. At any one time there were seven or eight birds by the waterfall, playing with eachother, drinking and pruning themselves. All the time there were new arrivals, or departures. Condors would swoop down the valley, circle once or twice, and come in to land. They were enormous. We were close enough to appreciate their size as they flew overhead. The wingspan can reach three metres. You can see the shadow of a condor on the valley floor as it glides imperiously hundreds of metres above. And they are masters of the air...some would take off in twos, and fly around the valley in tandem, in a formation sychronised to a perfection that would impress the Red Arrows. Rarely flapping their wings, they can glide for hundreds of kilometres without stopping. Some of the condors we were watching may have flown to that point, in landlocked Bolivia, from the Pacific ocean. As they glide, you can appreciate their size and formidable weight, as they are not buffeted by the wind, as the other smaller birds we saw (vultures and hawks) were. They have an elegance and a grace incongruous with their ugly features. In flight they are stunning, but on the ground they are horrendous.

Apparently, the place we were that day, deserted and isolated, is the best place to see Condors in the world. I wasn't sure, until rufo said, "Vamos" (Let's go!) As if on cue the condors begin their grand finale. Four or five would take to the sky at once. Above and below, and on every side there were condors. I was trying to count them, but in the end we could only estimate. We saw between 40 and 50 of the birds that day. We had to walk for seven hours, and the 3 hour descent was through a rainstorm that turned the pathway to a river, but I was grinning like a maniac all the way down. Drenched but happy. Becuase, like seeing the ferns in Amboro, seeing condors brought me close to nature, and close to a presious animal that we almost wiped out. to see so many, flying with a liberty we can only dream of, was an amazing experience. They are sky-kings, giants of the air, the mightiest birds of all. Condors.

Bolivia: Dinosaur Food,

We arrived in Bolivia through the dust of the Chaco. A 26 hour slog on a rudimentary bus brought us from Asuncion in Paraguay, through the forested desert wilderness that is the Chaco (accounting for 60% of Paraguays territory, but only 3% of its population,) to the idyllic Eden that is the village of Samaipata.

Three hours from the oil boomtown of Santa Cruz, Samaipata is a village nestled where the Andes meet the Amazon. We arrived on 17th December. "Samaipata" in the Inca language, Quechua, means "rest in the high place." And that is exactly what we did. We spent 12 days in that paradise, and, when we did leave, it was hard to wrench ourselves away.

That 12 days was not all rest and relaxation, however. The first thing we did, after checking into our hostel, La Posada Del Sol, was contact a local guide named Rufo, and visit the ancient cloud forest in Parque Nacional Amboro.

About an hour from Samaipata, we left the road and within five minutes were in the eery silence of the forest. Five minutes after that we were gazing in wonder at the Park's horticultural showpiece..."lecho gigante" giant ferns! They lived up to their name, towering above us and providing shade, like enormous, organic umbrellas. Some were over a thousand years old, and they have been growing in that part of Bolivia since the time of the lumbering giants that ate them for breakfast - the dinosaurs. In Australia and New Zealand, the only other part of the world where they grow, they are known, therefore, as "dinosaur food." It may sound corny, but walking in that forest, surrounded by oversized plants, and deaf to the noises of man far away, it felt like walking back in time. We were walking with dinosaurs, conquistadors, and the enigmantic revolutionary Che Guevara.

Rufo's grandmother was a traditional healer, and so he knew the names and uses of many of the plants we passed as we walked under the great canopy of trees. One, called boldo, was a treatment for asthmatics, and immediately slowed our breathing rate as we climbed through the clammy undergrowth towards a "mirador" (viewpoint). Another medicinal plant was altogether more sinister...Rufo told us many Bolivian women had died after ingesting the innocuous looking, but highly toxic leaves to perform home abortions. For that reason, it was called "trebo maldito," or "god damned trebo."

Rufo said that it was an unusually silent day. Indeed, aside from the occasional bird call, we did seem to be alone. However, rounding a corner and chatting, we came face to face with a metallic blue humming bird, hovering in the centre of the machete made trail. The way it stayed perfectly still, its wings beating in a motionless blur, had a surreal beauty.

Eventually, after following a smooth stream that was like a water park slide up a steep valley, we reached the mirador. The view was worth the walk. A perfectly clear sky, light blue and shimmering in the midday heat, stretched out over an infinity of unbroken forest. To the other side, row after row of formidable mountains, gradually getting higher. It was a humbling sight; the kind of view that makes you feel small, and wonder at the majesty of the natural world. In the 21st century, the power of nature is diminishing...or we are forgetting how to listen to, and live in harmony with, nature. But on that grassy clearing, surrounded by a sea of trees and a wall of stone, I felt a kind of primal connection to the world we live in, the world we rely on, that we are poisoning slowly. Like I said, it was humbling, but in a way empowering too. I felt, seeing that forest that no chainsaw will ever touch, that it isn't too late to learn, and to change, the way we are. For that, just being able to feel that, the call and voice of nature, when I usually live next to London (the Big Smoke) and Heathrow, was a privilege I will never forget, and an experience I will cherish forever.