| Hello, I don´t have a way to show you my pictures or write anything substantial right now, but I wanted to check in. Bolivia is amazing. I just spent a few days in an indigenous community on the northwest shore of Lake Titicaca, directly across from the Island of the Sun. After spending time in rural Mexico, I´ve now got a better gauge on what ¨poor¨ actually is, and the community we stayed with was doing all right. The conditions were ¨rustic¨ (I didn´t poop or shower the entire time we were there) but they had running water, electricity, cement floors instead of dirt, and outhouses. They certainly had enough food, too. I stayed with a family who had a small flock of sheep (including 3 baby lambs, the youngest of which was 1 week old and I got to pet him!), 2 milk cows, 2 pigs, and a few chickens, in addition to their fields where they grew potatoes, fava beans, quinoa, barley, and oats. Meals consisted of mostly potatoes and quinoa, with some meat served at each lunch and dinner. The entire community has organized itself into a tourism operation where they take in 2 or so tourists per family and then share the traditional lifestyle of their community (including agriculture, spirituality, history, and weaving) with you. It was really, really awesome, and I´m also really, really glad to be out of there, where I once again have a flush toilet that I can sit on and a shower too.
I´ve just arrived in Rurrenabaque, in the Amazon region of Bolivia. It´s a total tourist trap here, but we are going to spend tomorrow with an indigenous group that has gone into the ecotouristm business to learn about their lives and the agroecosystem here. Our hotel has fruit tree after fruit tree all over the place. I asked a woman about it and she said Ït´s an orchard.¨ Actually, she was complaining about the amount of basura (trash) she had to clean up when all of the ripe fruit fell to the ground. They´ve got avocado trees (called palca here instead of aguacate), guava, cacao, mango, cherimoya, starfruit (which is totally ripe now), and plenty of citrus. I think starfruit is carambola in Spanish and passion fruit is maracuya, but I would have to check to be sure.
If you recall my itinerary, which I posted on here a while back, we are doing the entire thing in reverse due to a road block from some protestors in the Yungas area. In Bolivia, whenever people want to protest, they don´t fuck around. They block off the roads. They have actually ousted presidents that way in the past. Right now the protestors have already gotten what they want but they are still blockading the road because they want the people who wouldn´t give in to their demands in the first place to be fired. In another part of the country right now, the most prominent brand of beer is having a strike as well because they are using spring water from the lands of an indigenous group and the workers say that since it´s their water, they ought to be paid more for their work (or something like that). Needless to say, it´s hard to get your hands on a Huari beer... and expensive too. I´ve had one and it wasn´t much to write home about, so I figure I´ll save the rest of the national supply to deserving Bolivians who can appreciate it better than I can.
I will likely have no internet for the rest of the trip until I reach La Paz in several days, unless I have time to return to this internet cafe before we leave Rurrenabaque. I look very, VERY forward to showing you my pictures and sharing all that I´ve learned. |
