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rainforest 
Wed Oct 13, 2010 at 16:36:23 PM PDT
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I don´t know who decided that paradise must be tropical, but I can tell you that the rainforest ain´t paradise. I´m hot, sweaty, and itchy right now, and I´m quite frankly ready to leave. I don´t see what part of having no air conditioning is pleasurable to anyone. But today was incredible. We visited the community of an indigenous group that practices slash and burn farming (also known as swidden) as well as agroforestry. I hear that tomorrow we´ll see more in the way of agroforestry. Slash and burn - which I will say much more about later when I am able to share my pictures - can be done in an incredibly sustainable way. And sometimes it is. Of course, it can also be done badly, with irresponsible burning or overly short fallow periods.
I didn´t see any wildlife larger than a turtle or a bird today, and even then I didn´t see macaws or toucans or anything exciting like that. Mostly I saw bugs. And got bit by bugs. The bugs are enormous. Well, some are. They have small ones too. They have bugs of all sizes. Really, they just have bugs. We saw evidence of monkeys and other animals around (i.e. remains of food they had eaten) but between hunting and everything else, the wildlife wasn´t eager to hang out with a bunch of gringo tourists. And, honestly, it´s a sign that we went with a responsible tour company that we didn´t see any wildlife, because it means they weren´t doing anything irresponsible (like bagging anacondas and then pretending to find them during the tour, a traumatic practice that kills the anacondas).
What I´d like to talk more about when I have the time to go over my notes is first, how the group we visited today practices responsible, sustainable agriculture in the rainforest, and second, why and how the rainforest is being destroyed. I got a firsthand look at that today, sadly.
The rest of our tour may not go as planned, but we´ll find out for sure tomorrow. There´s still a road blockade somewhere between here and La Paz, which means that tomorrow will continue as planned with a visit to a local sustainable farm and then a four hour drive to chocolate country. Then the next day will go as planned as far as the visit to the chocolate cooperative goes. After that, I don´t know what happens. We´re supposed to drive towards La Paz to (I think) a place called Caranavi, and if the road block is still there, that won´t be possible. Plan B might involve returning to Rurrenabaque and flying to La Paz and then I don´t know what. There´s supposedly very few modern conveniences like internet and laundry between here and La Paz if we take our planned route, but who knows. You might get another update from me in a few days if plans change.
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Tue Oct 12, 2010 at 14:16:02 PM PDT
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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.
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Sun Jan 04, 2009 at 15:37:31 PM PST
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(This breaks my heart. We are killing one of our closest living relatives so we can eat trans-fat free junkfood. - promoted by Jill Richardson)
Today, I've decided to start a series on palm oil and palm ingredients - and alternatives to them. I'm in the process of building a website on the same subject ( http://www.nomorepalm.com ), but that will take a bit of time, and time is not something worth wasting in this context.
A specific type of vegetable oil may not sound like a particularly interesting subject, but palm oil is no ordinary vegetable oil. It is one of the more destructive forces on our planet today. Or maybe I should say that the machine of people and corporations in place to grow and distribute palm oil is one of the more destructive forces on our planet. Either way, consuming this ingredient - which is in an unbelievable amount of foods and cosmetics and other things - is something which makes one responsible for encouraging this.
If you want some outside info, here's a good place to start: http://www.cspinet.org/palmoil...
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