Despedida.

When you think of time as it pulses along a section of life’s a timeline, second by second, from beginning to end, it seems eternal, yet at the same time, it passes in the blink of an eye. How large are events on this timeline that for us is all we know? I left for Bolivia on June 15th, and on August 15th I returned, and it felt as if the world stood still while I aged and was enlightened by my two months.

Leaving the house in the taxi very similar to the first one I rode in South America, the one in which I sat as we descended down into La Paz, I saw the same dark street spilled upon by the dull street lights, the same graffiti, the same piles of rubble and potholes. But this time it was a street I knew well, one that I walked countless times, potholes that I knew to look out for, a familiar road that gave me relief when I stumbled back onto it during the wee hours of the morning, the final stretch before falling into my heavily-blanketed bed of which i grew fond.

This time I knew what was inside the house alight through the many windows, and I know who turned on that light, to whom that silhouette in the window belongs; I have grown fond of those friends who are now sleeping in beds identical to mine. I held to keys to unlock the gate that my new friends are now standing in front of, waving goodbye and reaching out to me dramatically as I press my hand against the cold window, my warm breath fogging the cold glass. Only an hour before this moment I had my last hugs with beautiful people with whom I intersected by fate, chance that we both took this opportunity at the same time and with the same intentions. That was the last kiss with a guy that charmed me a little too late, a bittersweet goodbye to passion that happened in the right place at the wrong time. I will try and try but possibly never see these beautiful people again, and such is life-the arrival and departure, the falling in love and forgetting. All in the blink of an eye.

I saw the same views on the way in as I did headed out, but this time in reverse- the sky was dark, but the sun was on the opposite side of the planet. It was still cold, but we were on either side of the winter solstice. My eyes saw the same sights but I now knew what it felt like to be a part of the once-obscure clutter in the basin below. Now the Cholita digging in the trash made sense, the robust dogs running in packs along the autopista were no longer a strange sight.

I converse with the taxi driver with ease, his lousily enunciated words make sense to me and I ask him questions to fill the space that would otherwise be filled by a language barrier. He asks me how I’ve liked Bolivia.

At that moment all I wanted to do was get home. I was tired of the cold, the underdeveloped tourism industry and the resulting attitudes towards well-intending people such as myself. I was looking forward to returning to sunny Southern California where all of my belongings besides my three overpacked suitcases were waiting for me in the house that my father built, where mom will be waiting for me with open arms, telling me that the fridge is full with all of my favorites. I had missed the fact that the californian culinary respected my picky eating habits and I am royalty in my society, a youthful middle-class college student with nothing to lose and so much to gain.

On the plane above Los Angeles, I was marveling at the geography of the city. There were miles of neighborhoods crammed together, stitched by threads of roads in an unchanging gridded design, everything accessible as long as you have a car to pass over the never-ending residential stew. In the center of it all is a distinct growth- a smoggy metropolis of tall buildings with a foggy crown of pollution.

Planes take the place that birds had in La Paz, and everything is flat. Rather than my eyes reaching to until obscured by the view of snowy peaks of the Cordillera, the sun shining through the haze of pollution prevents me from seeing beyond Los Angeles.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” -Mark Twain

When being herded to the immigrations line, I had trouble speaking in english to the security guard, who gave me a strange look when I greeted him in spanish. Everyone was wearing expensive, fashionable clothing and children were screaming and tugging on their parents in the long line. People were scowling and complaining; these are people that say “I’m proud to be an American” without realizing that the United States makes up less than a third of the Americas.

I got off the plane and realized that I still had two outrageously heavy suitcases besides my rucksack; I couldn’t make a quick escape to my awaiting family. We ate a pasta dinner for 10 bucks- 75Bs that I would never have spent in La Paz- with fantastic customer service from a waitress hoping for a fat tip. We drove for two hours on a clean highway that had wiped out tons of homes and nature years before. When I arrive home, I would pile all of my clothing onto my other heaps of clothing, probably get on my computer next to my brother while sitting in front of the TV in a house that we could never pack on our backs if we wanted to head to the next place.

 “Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it.” – Eudora Welty

I think I’ll be going back.

All of the fantastic things you can do whilst wearing converse.

Before a long trip anywhere, converse are the first thing I pack.

You can visit waterfalls.

You can enjoy the sunshine from the top of a tour boat.

 

 

You can work in the office.

You can walk everywhere.

You can dance on counters. Notice the black converse on the bottom center. I’m wearing mine of course, but they’re hidden.

You can climb to heights.

You can ride quads. Please note my converse, on the bottom right.

You can ride a river boat through the amazon, as well as walk through the amazon. These converse were on the Yakuma river, in Beni, Bolivia.

You can lounge in hammocks, like here in Copacabana, Bolivia.

You can lounge by a lake, namely Lake Titicaca.

The edges of the basin that is La Paz.

La Paz is constructed differently from other big cities I have experienced.

In many of the U.S. states I have visited, the shelved hillsides feature homes with glass walls and cliffside pools that continue to become larger and more extravagant as the elevation rises.

La Paz, however, is like a petri dish full of ants, swarming around a sugar cube in the center. The ants in the center, directly on top of the sugar, are swarming and fighting for their share, while the ants on the fringes either have no access to the bustle in the center nor have interest.

The center of the La Paz basin consists of Zona Sur, the very commercial and somewhat glamorous part of the city, and the Prado and El Centro, where business people swarm the streets and vendors are packed along sidewalks selling their goods fiercely and competitively.

You’ll also see many beggars in the city, trying to take advantage of the socio-economic gap. You’ll see an elderly woman outreaching her mangled hand, eyes sparkling as her mouth quivers with spanish supplications.

Sadly, children are often doing the begging. Walking along the Prado, you see a group of children looking up at you with fascination. You smile, wave and say hola, but they suddenly begin to cry and tug at your hand as if they’ll scream their way into your pockets. Although it’s sad, this is the way some kids are trained. I’ve never before seen a race in which every single child is absolutely adorable. While argentinian hippies stop traffic in the centre to entertain the drivers, you’ll see children doing the same. I’ve seen young hula hoopers and little boys playing instruments, but none have been as sad as a sight I saw the other day.

A girl who could not have been older than seven years old was somersaulting along the cross walk in front of the honking, fuming traffic. After tumbling a few times, she popped up, obviously dizzy, revealing a dirt-covered face, knotted hair and raggedy clothing. She proceeded to collect her earnings.

In the more developed areas of any country, the sights are sad. Anthropology has taught me about realization of wealth. In the cusp of the basin, men is business suits and tourists in their comfortable brand name clothing walk the same streets that the impoverished sit, causing the lower class to develop resentment towards the well-off tourists. However, travel to the fringes of the city- Chasquipampa and above- and the people live simple lives without desires for more material and prestige. These are people that unlike the United States, it’s okay to be irrelevant, to have the same routine daily. The more remote their homes, the less cares they have, and the more deeply they are entrenched in nature.

You would think that these isolated, impoverished areas are the sadder of the two and therefore as a privileged tourist, I would prefer to stay away. However, the case is opposite. Those who live on the fringes in farming regions work their hands to the bone each day, and sadly live in less privileged conditions. However, these people are more open, carefree and happy; they relish all they can get- beautiful weather, family and a chance to celebrate life. Sorata is a great example of this, where people have identical daily routines yet enjoy the sunny days during which their children can play hours of barefoot futbol.

Although La Paz is a lovely city with plenty of diversity and sights to be seen, I sought out opportunities to leave to these fringes, climb the edges of the basin and see the city from a bird’s eye view.

La Muela del Diablo

There is a rock formation jutting up into the sky, the highest point immediately outside of the city, Southwest to Sopocachi, where I lived for my two-month stay.

Usually people take a pricey taxi up to the top to picnic or enjoy the view, but we decided to walk for a couple hours uphill, first through a little town called Pedregal that shrunk until all that remained was dirt road.

One thing that amazed me was how far Coca Cola’s reach was in this city. People bathe in Coca Cola here, and amongst the houses was the occasional shop that had a huge Coca Cola banner across the side. Ascending into the countryside where only a few houses scattered the paisaje, A bottle of Coca Cola occasionally sat on a dilapidated table or next to a house with no windows as women washed clothing or families sat in the sunshine.

This sign welcomes passersby to La Muela del Diablo in English, Spanish, and Aymara, one of the two dominant indigenous languages used in Bolivia.

Climbing even higher we came across with which we will soon become familiar, the Bolivian countryside. Sheep were coralled in small areas guarded by Cholitas with staffs and Burros and cows were tied up and grazing along the hills. Pigs and chickens roam freely around the houses, and a lone scarecrow stands on the property. I’m not sure why, but cows and burros are tied up separately and isolated from the rest. My only guess is that the owners may be fattening the cattle before breeding them.

During the climb the views of the city became more and more panoramic, and from the top the entire area of the basin could be seen, until the mountains rose up, forming a barrier from the snowy mountains and the jungle in their respective destinations.

We saw trails of men and women walking up the mountain, climbing the steep parts between the winding trail to save time. They carried bags and buckets and we realized that they were farming at the top. An adrenaline rush that we enjoyed from our beating hearts and this once-in a lifetime climb, is something that these people endure, rather than enjoy, every day.

Valle de las Animas

It’s called Valley of the Spirits. Take a couple minibuses and a bus to get to this point, it’s a small lake surrounded by an unappealing sight. Since we couldn’t catch the right bus to take there, we spent a little too much on a taxi to get up there. When we arrived, I was convinced that we had wasted money. This was until we saw the view from a few meters up.

Scaling along the edge of the hills, we noticed a couple kids that couldn’t have been any older than 7 or 8. I struck up a conversation with them, asking where they live and what they like to do. They said that they liked looking at the animals, the Perros, Burros, the Vacas. They were filthy and their clothes were torn. They said they were from a town that was a little ways away, even farther out from the city. Finally, the little boy says, “Puedes darnos plata?”

I didn’t have enough money to spare if I wanted to get back home, so I playfully laughed and said no, and they continued on to my other friend who had chosen not to hike up with us.

A thin trail appeared alongside the mountain and we followed it, finally reaching the highest point. We looked at the neighboring peak and noticed a corral on top, where donkeys were being led down the side by farming men and women. It seemed that a ritual was being performed.

A panoramic view of the valley features tall peaks, made of mudrock and molded by erosion, that look as if they were formed from mud that fell from the sky, creating tall “drip castles” like the ones I would make on the beach as a kid. It’s called Valley of the Spirits because these rock formations are said to resemble petrified souls. In the background sits the grand Illimani that, according to myth, fought with Illiampu, an opposing mountain. Today, the Illiampu is formed as if the top is chopped off.

The righteous one, looking away from the Illimani and towards the Illiampu, which is sheltered by clouds.

Waterfalls and the Inkachaka dam

A local took me to some waterfalls that have no name. Well, the name is unknown to he and his friends, and they can’t be found anywhere online, so in today’s context, they have no name. We drove through Miraflores and up to an isolated town, then back down where the road turned to dirt and wound into the western side on the edges of the city. It was a bumpy hour’s ride, during the rock began to smooth sheets of slate and we came upon the Inkachaka dam- Inka meaning “Inca” and Chaka meaning “dam”- holding back one of the city’s two reservoirs. Sheep were corralled so tightly in pens that they resembled dense cloud of off-white wool, and cows were scattered amongst llamas alongside the road. The only passersby we saw were local people on quads.

The reservoir, maintained by the Inkachaka dam.

We finally came upon the waterfalls, almost randomly placed and tumbling down the land that was formed like giant steps. It was so clear and cold that ice sickles formed along the edges of the cascade. The rock was all slate, and llamas roamed on the dead grass that surrounded. We were experiencing Bolivian water in it’s clearest form, before it could stagnate in the reservoir, moving too quickly to be contaminated.

Lots, and lots, of Llamas.