Despedida

My last week went by ridiculously fast. When I wasn't running round in La Paz saying goodbye to people and trying to see and taste everything for the last time, I spent some time in La Senda Verde to chill out with the monkeys and parrots.

I am very proud of this photo because I managed to duck just before the parrot whammed into my face!

Above: These lovebirds were a little more sedate!

After a three-hour bus-ride, we decided to throw on our bikinis and relax in the river where the current was flowing briskly (but not so fast that we lost control!) Me and Joanna decided to try to work off our lunch by swimming straight into it.

The zipwire was right above us and a rickety bridge provided a jaw-dropping jungle panorama. We ran back to our cabins, trying not to get bitten to shreds and were impressed with how un-'rusitc' they were (hot-running water and toilet paper are a luxury in cheap Bolivian accommodation!)

The cool river woke us up and we had plenty of energy to search for the waterfalls. There were no written maps but a volunteer sketched us a route which proved to be accurate. Some of the roads were a bit sketchy and we got our feet soaked wading through the river to find it. The waterfall was tiny so it was a massive anticlimax but the view from the top of the mountains made it worth our while.

Taylor and the others went ahead so thanks to our terrible sense of direction, our journey back down to the Wildlife Reserve was a little precarious and we made several wrong turns.

But when wracked our brains,

 we eventually made it.

Everyone slept soundly that night, especially the people who had done death-road. They were out before they could get dinner.

The next morning, we were woken up by some very cute golden monkeys.

There was a rampant alpha-male monkey on the loose so we were banned from using the pool (we tried to trespass but some squaking toucans gave us away). Instead, we gave this lil fella a visit.

He too made a bid for freedom when he was three months old. After a month of searching, the reserve had almost given up on him. Until one day, when his keeper was looking for him, el Oso suddenly appeared and gave him a bear hug from behind! He's got a very good diet and eats porridge for breakfast, choclo and vegetables for lunch and fish for dinner. Felix described it as a celebrity fad-diet. Which is ironic, because this bear used to be famous. They exploited him to do tricks in carnivals, circus-style. Luckily, he was rescued and subsequently excused from such duties.
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The next day saw some standard impromptu festivities down El Prado.

We saw an array of stuffed and live animals plus the occasional animal mask.

To spice things up a bit, Felix and I climbed to the top of San Francisco and watched down on the midget-procession from the Bell Tower.

 You can see a few llamas scattered amogst the people if you look closely.

The procession was probably the best part of the view from San Francisco Church because the skyscrapers obscured the rest of our view. Nevertheless, we climbed as high as we possibly could, scrambling over the no-entry rope to climb up some crumbling wooden stairs. We didn't acheive much from our endevours except stepping in a load of pigeon shit.

Coming down was more impressive and we saw a beautiful roof-top garden which reminded me of the Alhambra in terms of its natural beauty and tranquility.

We could have lingered longer but Rebekka and Joanna were waiting for us downstairs so we had to cut it short.

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A few day later... 5am

Felix and I madly agree to join Adrian for his morning meander in El Alto. He greets all the vendors as if they were old friends and we stumble into a musician's house, whose basic abode is lined with empty egg boxes for soundproofing. We eat a great sarjta de pollo but Felix's British stomach reacts badly to it the following day. I do some more research from my article and wait about an hour to have my fortune told. The mystic incense from the burning mita makes me drowsy and I don't mind the wait. We can see the whole city, partially submerged in smog. It is beautiful. I don't want to leave.

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5am, the next day
[my last...]

I'm up at stupid-a-clock for Adrian, again. We are on the way to Yatiri, a little-known village which overlooks lake Titicaca. His clarivoyante friend reads my fortune, throwing the coca leaves and blessing me, hoping that fortune will be kind to me.

It's hard to guess her age and half of her blessings are in Aymaran.

She speaks a little Spanish but communication is difficult and she has to ask my name several times.

When she tries to repeat my surname, it comes out like "Warnaka"

She shows me how to make tunta (white potato, see previous entry about the marketplace) and we tug the sheep into submission. A little kitten sits on my lap but eats my bread while I'm not looking. I haven't eaten for 5 hours so I am not amused when she steals my breakfast!

Before we left, Adrian persuaded the micro driver to wait for me while I ran up the hill to take a photo of the lake.

I couldn't get back to La Paz fast enough. I wanted to spend as much time as possible with my flatmates and make sure I said goodbye to everyone who was important to me. We went out for a BX family meal to La Paz, where I made a toast to all my friends. All our 'salud's were done in the correct Bolivian manner and we looked each other straight in the eye. The only time I looked down was to hide my face, as I tried not to cry.

I've spent the last week in Rodge's room because there is no room in the girls'. So we stayed up talking for the last time and I made him promise to keep in touch.

These two months in Bolivia have flown by like two weeks and I really hope I can keep in contact with at least some of the incredible people I met. It's given me a completely different perspective on life and I hope to carry some of that Latin spontaneity and joie-de-vivre with me back to Canterbury.

The Shoeshine Tour and The Verbena

The shoeshine tour was allowed us to explore a few hidden corners of La Paz. The highlights include seeing some prestigious hatmakers at work, learning about how to make non-artificial cinammon ice-cream and finding a fresh fish market, where mauri, ispsi and trucha go straight from Lake Titicaca to the fryer.

It is rare to find women shoeshiners and our guide told us that people often try to take advantage of her.

One Italian man tried to buy her body and offered to send her two hundred dollars a month if she would have his children!

When I heard that Maria Galindo helped rescue this women off the streets,

my opinion of Maria changed entirely. When I interviewed Ms Galindo last week (see photo below), I thought she was a petulant misandrist. But knowing that she had taken a stranger into her residence at Mujeres Creando and changed her life forever, forced me to reconsider. 

She does not have time for everyone, myself included, (she kept me waiting for an hour then passed me over to a colleage), but at least she is proactive in her feminism.

But that´s just one chapter of this shoeshiner´s story. 

Our guide and her husband met each other on the streets. She was adopted by

a widow then ran away from home when the widow died and her family

mistreated her. Meanwhile, her husband was abused by his Father and

started living on the streets when he was eight years old. They both dabbled with drugs but when he got her preganant, they decided it was time for a new start. They were determined to make a new life for their children and wanted them off the streets. They eventually saved enough money to rent a place in El Alto; a remarkable acheivement considering that average shoeshiner earns the equivalent of four to six pounds per day. Our guide managed to find her biological Mother. Although she feels no attachment to her, she gets along with her siblings despite the fact they were blessed with the love and resources she never had. They occasionally lend her money, but mostly, like always, she has to look out for herself. As for her husband, he still hides the fact that he is a shoeshiner (he wears a mask and tells his family he is a bricklayer), but he is proud of his son and hopes to make more money with the shoeshine tours and magazines (an NGO called ´hormigon armado´ allows shoeshiners to voice their opinions on a variety of political issues). 

While our guide is telling me this, her son kept tugging at my arm and I tell her he is very strong for such a small child. His parents proudly claim he´ll be a famous footballer one day.

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A couple of days later, La Paz was covered in flags and market stalls to celebrate independence. We saw countless parades with crazy costumes and as night fell, the Prado became extremely crowded. 

Cholitas were selling a toxic white drink with foam spilling over the sides. When Damien (a French diplomat working in Bolivia) asked what was in it,they dodged the question but we think it contained milk, cloves, cinammon, singani and God knows what else. Apparently, it is a secret recipe, inhereted from Paceñan ancestors which was invented to stop them feeling the cold. Elena Cavari, a local television presenter, came up with a curious similie to describe it. 

"Sucumbe is like the mountain, Illimani", she said. "People are drawn to its white top."

(picture credit: http://www.summitpost.org/images/medium/632371.JPG)

This comment made me laugh because it makes heavy drinkers sound like intrepid explorers capable of climbing the Bolivian Andes! This woman should be employed by Heineken for her creative advertising. Anyway, thanks to sucumbe, the grandeur of the parade was overshadowed by drunkeness. Eighty-two people were hospitalized and two people died that night. Right by San Francisco square, everyone was pushing and shoving. Soon, it turned into a stampede and we were struggling to breathe. Me and Matthew were very worried about a little boy caught up in the middle of the death-trap. He was crying and terrified so we started shouting "¡cuidado, hay un niño, cuidado!". Someone stronger started shouting too and managed to protect him by wrapping him in his arms.

On the news the next day, they tried to interview a drunk ambulance driver who had bumped into and damaged two houses in El Alto. He refused to co-operate and spat straight into the camera.

Apparently, Evo Morales tried to ban such verbenas and wants to spend the money people use on booze on public works. The pueblo ignores him, and helps themselves to another drink.

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Cocha

Having so much fun in the flat, it´s easy to forget how violent and polarized La Paz really is. There is a darker side to La Paz, from the glue-sniffing shoe-shiners to the weary children who offer to pack your bags for a few measly bolivianos on the supermarket checkouts.

It´s easy to be fooled by the Cholita´s welcoming smile, forgetting that she works an eight to fourteen-hour day, trapped behind a tiny stall. The saddest thing is when her children are with her. She has to look after them constantly, they can't afford to go to school and there is no question of hiring a babysitter. So the children sit and stare vacantly beside her, indifferent to the passers-by.

You wonder why it is always women, sitting behind those stalls. The only male street vendors are burger sellers or leering old men on the side of El Prado, offering to sharpen your knife.

Having interviewed a group of radical feminists this week, I´ve been particularly aware of machismo and how hard life is for some Bolivian women. Domestic abuse is a big problem and even in the middle classes, supposedly educated men frequently mistreat their partners because they know their wives will be too ashamed to denounce them.

Thankfully, I haven´t experienced much machismo first-hand. People don´t mind my gender, but race is a problem and no matter how much my Spanish improves, I will always stand out as a gringa girl. This week, my so-called ´friend´, Aldair, came to my flat and robbed me and two of my friends. Rodge (my flatmate) reckons he´d been planning it for a while because everyone knows that gringos have money. Looking at the picture of us happily eating ceviche together, unaware of what would happen next, makes me feel utterly betrayed.

So by Friday night, I was fed up and needed to get out of La Paz. So me, Michael, Ivan and Naomi set off to Cochabamba, on the sunnier side of Bolivia.

The most exciting thing about Cochabamba, apart from the beautiful setting and climate, is the food. Cocha cuisine is nationally renowned and the red-wine duck with yucca I ordered did not disappoint.

The squares were charming and you would expect them to be peaceful. However, we saw several fights that weekend. Ivan´s cousin stepped in to break up this fight: between a Mother and another adult, who called her child a thieving liar. 

We didn´t want to partake in the violence and were warned against the cheaper hostels, which frequently got robbed. Since Michael had a Bolvian friend working in hospitality here, we treated ourselves to a comfy hotel room, although knowing we were going out, we weren´t sure how much time we´d get to actually enjoy it! Luckily, the first night was just a pre-party so we collapsed into bed at a reasonable hour and slept until midday.

The next night was a little more hardcore. Ivan got us VIP tickets to Winterfest, an annual festival for the elite of Cochabamba and La Paz. I am not going to publish details of that night, but cease to say it was eventful.

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The next day, I woke up in Ivan´s flat, because I couldn´t afford another night at the hotel. Every other hostel I applied to turned me down since I had forgotten my passport. I guess they thought I was an illegal immigrant or something. He was so tired that he slept on the floor and kindly left me his double bed; something he'd begrudge me for in the morning.

His Aunt was a grandmotherly figure who made a delicious chicken satay for lunch the following day. She is just about to open a restaurant in Torotoro and I have no doubt she´ll be successful there.

My last memory of Cochabamba is the impressive Jesus statue. It´s even bigger than the one in Rio. Apparently, the person who commissioned it was a corrupt business tycoon who fled to America because the government was on his case. His sudden conversion to Christianity is suspect. But whatever his faults, his legacy is impressive.

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Spontaneous Street Dance and el Desfile de Orgullo Gay

They say that dancing is in the Latin American blood. And it shows. You will inevitably stumble upon groups of dancers doing anything from milongos to cielitos to chacareras to gatos escondidos to breakdancing with a football. You´ll see people busting a move in most plazas, at any time of the day or night.

To celebrate the myriad of dancing styles and events, the University recently held a fair to promote different types of Bolivian folk dance. At the very least, it was an excuse to show off some gorgeous traditional costumes.

No dance is complete without good music and the guitarrists joined the bandwagon.

However, costumes are not only used to celebrate the past but also to "concientizar" (raise awareness) about contemporary issues. The Gay Parade is a perfect example and the riot of music and colours made the GBLT  (LGBT in English) cause impossible to ignore. 

This annual event is particularly important in Latin America, where machismo is still strong and homophobia is common. According the the GBLT website, homophobic discrimination, including namecalling and physical attacks, are a daily occurence so that fact that hundreds of people turned out to support gay, lesbian and transvestite rights represents a milestone in sexual and homosexual equality.

Just this April, the first gay marriage took place in Buenos Aires (although it was foreigners who got married not Argentinians) and Bolivian GBLT activists are hopeful that the bill for homosexual marriage in Bolivia will eventually be passed. Señor Presidente, Evo Morales, supported the march and was seen on stage at the end of the Parade. You can´t see him in this photo but I promise he was there!

Having explained the importance of gay rights, Escarlin invited me to join the parade and support her gay brother, Aldair. We danced along El Prado for over an hour in our pink "libertad" T-shirts, with multicoloured joker hats and colourful GBLT flags.

^That´s Eskarlin

Other marchers were even more eccentric and extroverted with their appearance. The aim was to challenge the taboo of being gay by being as outrageous as possible and we saw a variety of angel and devil costumes, fantasy butterflies and floats of coloured balloons to symbolize acceptance, hope and freedom.

^And here´s Aldair

The following quote sums up the spirit of the evening:

Anyways, Love is Love

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