on the move again in Bolivia

After 2 leisurely weeks in Sucre, Bolivia, we are on the move again. Currently we are in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. More on this area later but to catch up on news since last I wrote....

We enjoyed our time in Sucre living in a house & heading out to the campesino market on a regular basis. It is such a delight to buy fresh fruit off the back of a truck or out of the back of a station wagon, fruit transported directly from farm to market. I continue to be blown away & impressed by the local food security and diversity here in Bolivia. Wow!

Oh, and I made an interesting discovery.... for some reason I seem to be acutely allergic to corn in North America but not down here where all sorts of interesting corns are grown and available in the markets. Hope that genetic diversity can last well into the future. It is pretty awesome.

Before leaving Sucre, we took a day trip to the nearby town of Tarabuco where the Quechua culture is strong and thriving. Many people still wear their traditional indigenous attire which dates back thousands of years. The local weavings are incredible. They are ornate & sophisticated and show the mythology & dreamings of these people. I am told that the weavers have these images in their minds from dreams & visions & weave them into extremely complex designs without so much as a pattern.

Here is a picture of a couple of the folks in Tarabuco:

When we left Sucre, we decided to travel to the Santa Cruz area via Monteagudo in the Chaco region of Bolivia. Monteagudo is a place we had never heard of, however, our friend in Sucre is from there and really recommended it -- and it is on the "Ruta de Che" (that is Che Guevera) so hey.... why not. What I read was that travel between Sucre & Santa Cruz is hellish at the best of times due to windy bumpy roads & uncomfortable rickety buses... this way we would break up our trip. A quick search on google of travel between Sucre & Monteagudo told me that during the dry season travel between the 2 places is about 10 hours and in the rainy season (which we are just entering), travel time is "incalculable."

With this fair warning, we headed out. We arrived bleary-eyed at the rather nasty hour of 4:30 am and sat in the dust & diesel fumes at the small bus station with the other campesinos waiting for buses to their various small town destinations. Two hours later, our friend's sister showed up to greet us & take us to her home, a very open-air place with pleasant courtyard but not much space for sleeping.

Our 4 days spent in Monteagudo were activity filled thanks to this family who took us in & provided most excellent hospitality. Highlights included 2 hikes up local mountain with our new Monteagudo friends & a school field trip to a local river for a day of swimming, eating & fun. I don't think many tourists (or blonde people) go through Monteagudo... we were treated as though we were exceptionally exotic for the duration of our stay. We all came away feeling pretty special so when we arrived in Santa Cruz back to being our old frumpy selves, it was a bit of a let-down!

Here are two shots of one of the mountain hikes we did near Monteagudo with our host family.

We were invited to participate in the school field trip of the little girl in the family with whom we stayed. We all loaded onto a school bus like sardines, kids, propane tanks, massive pots, bags of food (even a live chicken in one of the bags I would later discover) & dogs chasing us down the dusty road out of town - and off we went.

When we got there, fires were lit near the river to prepare for lunch & dinner and out came the chicken. Our friend took the chicken down the river along with a big knife she sharpened on a nearby rock and we watched as the chicken went from being alive to bits of meat in the lunch soup. Interesting!

How does this differ from the Canadian school outing experience? Being the "experiencial ed" guy he is, Steve had some definite thoughts about that. . . 'nuf said.

Then, back in town, a different version of chickens. One of the cousins of our host family is married to a guy who raises "gallos peleandos" (fighting roosters). He goes around the country with these guys and the bets are placed on which rooster will be cock-o-the-hill (or in other words, still alive by the end of the fight). In the real fights, they fight with spikes on their legs & vicious biting beaks. We got to see a practice round in which these 2 guys were muzzled & had protective gear on their legs. They sparred for about 45 minutes. Apparently this kind of cock-fighting happens in Bolivia, Argentina & Brazil.

Before our departure, we went to a local leather-maker's shop to check out the traditional & very distinctive Chaco-style hat. Here I am wearing the gavilan-style hat which sells for about 500 bolivianos (around $80). They are pretty gorgeous hats. This very talented man is part of Asociacion de Artesanos en Cuero. Tailor-made hats & export to Canada may be possible if anyone is interested.

We left Monteagudo yesterday by minibus for the long, hot, winding and bumpy drive to Santa Cruz. Things were going well until a guy with a live pig waved down the minibus. The poor pig's 4 legs were tied together and he was shoved in a big sack before being hoisted up onto the roof and tied down with ropes onto the roof-rack, can you believe it, then we were off? Let me tell you, some of the stunning scenery of lush green mountains falling down into the lowlands jungle was lost on me as I thought of the poor hot pig bumping along above our heads. Here in this photo you can just see the blue sack on the roof.

That's the pig.

I couldn't bear to take a photo of the poor guy from closer.
The lives of chickens, pigs and cows....

Tomorrow we are heading off to a major tributary of the Amazon River.
More soon.

La vida tranquilla (y blanca) in Sucre, Bolivia

These days find us hanging out in Sucre, Bolivia for a couple of weeks. Sucre is a city of just over 200,000 with a very temperate & pleasant climate.

Before we got here, we travelled through Potosi, the highest city in the world and centre of silver mining dating back to Spanish colonial days. Once upon a time, Potosi was the most important city of the whole Spanish empire... Here is a shot from Potosi´s Casa de Moneda, where the many silver (and gold) coins of the Spanish empire were minted. This is one creepy-looking mask with mysterious origens (and meaning), at the front gates.

We spent a couple of nights in a very cold and dark colonial-era hostal which was previously a convent for cloistered nuns. Actually, our time in Potosi was quite sad and difficult for me. Just as we arrived, I learned that my mother had died back in Canada. She died early in the morning of Todos Santos (All Saints Day) which the family thought very fitting. After much thought, I decided to stay in Bolivia as the logistics of travelling back for the funeral would have been very complicated. It was a hard decision, but I did what I could to feel close to and think about my mom here.

One thing we did to honour Mom´s memory was to participate in the Todos Santos activities. In Potosi (like some other cities in Bolivia) people whose loved ones have died within the last year open their homes to the passing members of the public and offer food and drink. It was rather touching to go into several of these homes (rich and poor) and to see the lovely shrines complete with photos, fresh flowers and other ornamentation set up in honour of those who have passed away. Of course Mom was very much in my thoughts in all of these homes, but it was a reminder of how all of us around the planet are linked in our humanity and in the flow of life and death. Here is a photo on the streets of Potosi after we had attended a home where we were loaded up with a package of treats to take with us:

Now we are in Sucre, Bolivia´s beautiful "white" colonial city, and it really is white... here is a street shot. Sucre is famous for its chorizo sausage sandwiches and chocolate (especially Para Ti chocolates ... absolutely delicious).

We found a house in which to live here for a couple of weeks with a very nice Bolivian woman who is also a Spanish teacher. Steve has already signed up for daily Spanish lessons. It is a good set-up for us for the time being. She is introducing us to some great Bolivian cooking. Papas rellenas with piquante sauce anyone?

We have also been out to nearby Parque Cretacico, a dinosaur park, posting well over 400 tracksets of dinosaurs which walk up and down and all around a virtually vertical limestone hill which once-upon-a-time was flatland, when much of Bolivia was an inland sea and dinosaurs roamed.

Oh, and you-know-who got a job selling carrots in the campesino market: