El Vago en Suramerica

Buenos Aires.

A different world, perhaps?

But today, Horacio translated an Argentine saying for me: Argentina is composed of many different worlds.

Latin America is a million worlds, a great collection of places so completely different from one another and yet somehow similar, and all sharing this same identity.

What is Latin America? Americans countries where Spanish or Portuguese is the national language. Is there anything else? Perhaps Colombia shares some traits with Ecuador, which is a similar country to Peru, which in turn is very much like Bolivia… but in what ways is Bolivia like Argentina? And in what ways is Argentina like Colombia, or Ecuador?

They are different worlds.

On Monday, at 6:30 in the evening, I took a taxi to the La Paz bus terminal. I booked the next ticket towards the south of the country, a 9 hour trip to the city of Potosi. It was an early morning change of buses, and I was soon on another bus to the border with Argentina at the city of Villazon. From there, I purchased a ticket which would take me to Buenos Aires. I left La Quiaca, on the Argentinian side of the border, at 9:30 at night, and arrived in Jujuy at 1:30 am. The bus was to leave at 5:30 from Jujuy, so I had 4 hours to sleep on the bus before departure. On Thursday morning, at 6:30 am, I arrived in Buenos Aires.

It was a trip of three nights and two days.

The first day, in Bolivia, was a trip through some spectacular but decidedly empty scenery: huge, copper-colored mountains and winding valleys, all devoid of any signs of life. The road was bad, but it gave a cool sense to the journey. This bus trip showed Bolivia to be a country that perhaps looks a bit like the American West did as it was settled for the first time, a land of tiny frontier towns and cowboys and broken dreams. We stopped to eat in a dusty little village that looked like the most isolated place on the planet, seemingly sustained purely by this daily flow of buses down the one highway.

The following day in Argentina was a bit different. We had entered a fertile land of green, of fields and forests and modern-style rest stops. The was good, and we could drive at 100 kilometers per hour for one of the first times since I left the United States. It`s a long way to Buenos Aires, but it seemed like we were flying.

It was a weird twist of fate that I spent a total of 60 hours in transit from La Paz to Buenos Aires. My trip both began and ended with a 60 hour bus journey. I`ve come full circle. The adventure has, more or less, come to an end.

Buenos Aires is famous for being the “Paris of South America,” the cultural capital of the continent, the most European city in Latin America. Perhaps its true. Almost everyone here is of purely European descent, and there is almost no black or indigenous inhabitants. The city`s dance, the tango, is a European art. People here speak differently than anywhere else, and they act differently as well. I don`t know if its true that they are so arrogant, though they are famous for thinking highly of themselves. I do know, however, that many residents of Buenos Aires have no idea how to dance latin music.

There are things I like about the city. I like its architecture, its parks, its wide boulevards, its incredible food. I like the convience it offers. Here, they have big walk-in pharmacies and extensive book stores absent in other countries.

And there are things I don`t like so much, as well. The streets seem calmer and emptier than in other Latin American capitals. People here stroll in the streets, the drive around, they meet their friends on street corners, but they dont LIVE on the streets like they do elsewhere. Everyone is more civilized, but sometimes too much. It doesnt seem quite chaotic enough. Finally, discoteques dont get crowded until 3 am, and stay open until 7. Its fine if the party goes late, but what the hell do you do from 9 pm until 3 am? Sleep?

I am living at the moment with Horacio, a family friend who lived with my grandparents as part of an exchange program AGES ago, and his family. I`m sharing a room with a hyper 9 year old, Franco. Everything is going excellently.

I have some very touristy final plans for my trip… I would like to take a boat to Colonia, in Uruguay, on Wednesday, and spend the evening there, returning to Buenos Aires the following day. It is only a three-hour journey. Then on Friday, If I can find a cheap flight, I`ll fly to the Argentine border with Brazil and Paraguay to visit Iguazu falls on Saturday. On Sunday I`ll fly back to Buenos Aires to catch my evening flight to Boston. I arrive home at about 9 am on Sunday.

It will be a hectic end to the trip, but I think it will be lots of fun as well.

I hope to see everybody soon.

Love,
Dan

Rock On!

The last week has been GREAT. I love Bolivia, just for being more different, more anything-goes, than almost any country I`ve visited.

An Isreali traveler commented to me that he hated La Paz, that it was filthy and basically just an enormous market. It`s true. La Paz is not a clean place, and it is basically a giant, 7-day market. It`s wonderful. And though its full of tourists, it is also extremely easy to find places without any foreigners at all.

The location of La Paz is ridiculous. It is located in the bottom of a huge valley at an absurd elevation in the dry, empty mountains of the andean altiplano desert. Perched above La Paz, on a plateau at 4,000 m above sea level, is El Alto, Bolivia`s new largest city. Originally a slum neighborhood on the hillside slopes of La Paz, El Alto is now South America`s fastest growing city with over 1 million inhabitants. Check out this picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Lapaznasa.jpg
El Alto is the flat part, La Paz is in the valley below.

Backing up a bit…

From Cusco I went to Puno, on the shore of Lake Titicaca. The following day I took a tour of the lake, to the floating islands of Uros and to the island of Taquile. The lake is gorgeous, and the tour was really great. We stopped first at the floating islands, which are constructed of reeds that grow in the lake. Only several families live on each island, and they travel between the islands, to school or to visit friends or whatever, on reed boats. It is a crazy existence. The fact is, however, that these islands would not exist today if it wasn`t for tourism. Because of a constant flow of tourists the islands`s inhabitants are fairly well-off, but literally everything is catered to the arrival of the tourists boats, and the place doesn`t feel very genuine at all. Far more genuine was Taquile Island, where the inhabitants are mostly farmers, and they have developed their own society more or less unaffected by tourism. The island was beautiful, not only with views of the lake but also of snow-capped mountains in nearby Bolivia.

On the boat trip I met a Japanese couple, and I stayed with them for most of the day. They told me that they would be going to La Paz the following day early in the morning. After the boat trip I decided that I would head to La Paz as well, and we ended up on the same bus. It was a fine, easy-enough trip into Bolivia. On the way, we stopped in Copacabana on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca, and had a nice lunch on the lakefront. We arrived in La Paz in the evening, and as we left the bus we began to search for a hotel along with a Mexican guy we met upon arrival. I ended up sharing a room with the Mexican in hotel “Las Brujas,” which is down the street from the crazy witches market where indigenous women sell all varieties of herbal medicines.

On thursday, the four of us began to explore the city a bit, and we made a trip to the outskirts of La Paz to a park called “Valle de la Luna.” It was a truly lunar landscape, a crazy maze composed of towering pillars of sand above deep crevasses. We spent an hour exploring, and then wandered a bit further to the La Paz zoo. The zoo wasn`t great, but we enjoyed it nevertheless.

That evening the Japanese couple left. The Mexican guy and I had signed up for a bicycle tour down the “Death Road,” from La Paz to Coroica in the nearby jungle, the following day. We had been told to meet at 7:30 at the travel agency, but we slept until 7:50. Literally jumping out of bed, we raced to the agency, but were told that the bus had already left. We had to go with a travel agent in a taxi to catch the bus at the exit of La Paz. Freezing cold, we arrived at the beginning of our bike route, at some 4,600 meters above sea level. That is very, very high. There were icicles on the side of the road as we set off on our bikes.

The trip began with a steep downhill, paved section, and we cruised effortlessley quite a ways. After this was an uphill section, which I enjoyed quite a bit. It was nice to work a little bit after so much effortless biking. Following the uphill began the real “death road,” a long, unpaved section of road with vast cliffs on the side. It was dusty, rocky, and fun.

I had gone with perhaps the cheapest tour company, not really thinking much about the quality of the tour I would be receiving. Throughout the trip, there were problems with our bikes. My mexican friend fell near the beginning when his tire actually fell off. Someone else had his seat fall off, and another group member had a wheel pop. At one point my back break stopped working, and I had to switch bikes. When things were looking particularly bad in terms of our bike situation, another group lined up behind us on the side of the road. We talked a bit with them; they were with the guides “gravity assisted biking,” apparently the best quality guides of the trip. Next to one another, we looked like a group of absolute misfits. We were all men, wearing unmatching jackets, with different, all seemingly disfunctional bikes, and no guide in sight. The gravity group cruised in with matching uniforms, shiny, new bikes, and a guide who would inform everyone about the upcoming terrain and any interesting sights. It was unanymous opinion among my group that we were cheap bastards and that we recieved what we had payed for. Nevertheless, we had lots of fun. The people in our group were great. Upon arrival at the end of the route, I must say that I had no regrets.

That evening I went with my mexican friend to a concert by Vicentico, the lead singer of the Fabulosos Cadillacs. The Cadillacs are one of the giants of Spanish Rock, an argentine band famous throughout latin america. It seemed that nearly all of La Paz was present in the open-air theater for the concert, and it was a true spectacle. Vicentico is a great singer, and everyone in his band is very professional, all excellent musicians. There was the sense at the end of a slight disappointment, because the band didnt play some of the Cadillacs biggest hits. I didnt particularly care, and enjoyed myself tremendously.

On Saturday morning the Mexican left, and I met Freddy, and member of the hospitality club from La Paz. We went together to a nice viewpoint of the city, and talked for a while. In the evening I walked up from La Paz to El Alto. The climb took me about an hour and a half, having climbed up over 400 meters in elevation. I walked through crazy hillside markets, around winding roads offering spectacular views, and up dizzying staircases on the edge of slums. I arrived on the plateau in an empty, barren field with several train-tracks cut across it, and some tents set up marking the beginning of yet another market. This market is probably one of the cheapest in the world, with ridiculously low prices, but I merely wandered through. At sunset, I took a bus back into the valley. This was certainly one of my favorite walks of the entire trip.

After getting back from going out, I had a big problem in my hotel. The guy at the door gave me my key, but to open the door to my room required quite a bit of effort. As I was working at it, the key snapped in half, stranding the end in the door´s lock. I got the guy at the door to come up and take a look, and we worked together to remove the key-part. We had no luck. He told me I could sleep in another room that minutes before had been abandoned, and I did so. I slept poorly, though, and couldn´t feel rested until I was able to access my possessions once again. At 9 am, the hotel staff told me that the door had not yet been fixed. Finally, at 11, I was told that I would again be able to enter my room. It was a frightening evening, being trapped without money and contact lens solution.

Today I will meet some friends (my own age!) in a short time. I met them yesterday evening in a great disco. And tomorrow, I head to Argentina. It will be a long trip, but I`m looking forward to it…

There is still some adventure to come!

Love,
Dan

AND BY THE WAY…. It looks damn far from La Paz to Buenos Aires on the map, but it isnt so bad. I started this trip with a 60 hour bus ride, and its 50 hours to Buenos Aires. Ì´ll be in Argentina´s capital in no time at all.

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