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Archive for March, 2006

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Please pass the guinea pig

Friday, March 31st, 2006

At about 6:30 in the morning I woke up to the radio being played fairly loudly, right outside my room…oh man.  Slept for a while longer and finally got up around 8 or 9.  Elvis gave me some bread and cinnamon tea, which I thought was a fine breakfast.  Then out came a huge bowl of soup, full with potatoes, pasta and veggies…again, I could not finish it all.  After breakfast we left to go across the street to visit Mamita.  “We’re going to stay awhile today.  Mom’s going to make guinea pig for you.”  Oh…how nice.

[read on]

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Tumayqusun

Thursday, March 30th, 2006

The whole family, Mamita and Papito included, gathered and started walking down the road toward the main town of Tiraque, where the festival was.  After a short while of walking, two cars pulled up and we all piled in for the ride.  In town, we all met up again and headed into Elvis’s godmother’s house, which was also a hopping chicheria, kind of like a bar, but the only thing on offer to drink is chicha.  We also ate chicharrón, a prepared pork product which was highly touted before heading out to the country.  (In curiosity, I just looked it up, and looks like we were eating pork skin fried in butter…anyway, it was pretty good.) [read on]

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Eating corn stalks and drinking chicha – an intro to the Bolivian countryside

Friday, March 24th, 2006

I woke up in the middle of the night having to pee, but didn’t want to go outside into the cold, so I laid there a while, thinking about my stolen bankcard…I hadn’t yet called the bank and was sure my thieves had used it to buy all sorts of extravagant things.  I fell back asleep and we woke up a short while later to head out to the country, but not without me calling in my stolen bankcard first.  Bank One, who is now Chase assured me that no one had used my card, which was a relief, but they offered no assistance in getting a card to me quickly.  Any way you can send it to Bolivia?  “No, we can only send it within the US.”  Any way you could expedite the service since now it has to go through two mailing processes before it gets to me…you know, since I’m in Bolivia?  “Well, it takes 2 days to make the card, and then it goes out regular mail.”  And no way to expedite this?  “No.”  Thanks, Bank One/Chase, your customer service is superb.  “Don’t mention it.”

Enough about that, though…I quickly forgot about this slight inconvenience during the next few days, which were probably my most memorable experience on this trip so far, 6 months in.  I thank Elvis a million times over for taking me out here…

[read on]

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Playing with water and foam

Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006

I called Elvis from the bus station…he had been waiting around in a nearby market since 6:00 and said he would be there in 5 minutes…and he was.  He offered that I could stay at his house, which was great, would save me more money, and would also give me a chance to see what a house looks like in Bolivia.  He lived in a neighborhood that was a good ways out of town…I was definitely the only foreigner around.  His “house” was one room…a whole bunch of rooms surrounding a courtyard with a shared bathroom.  There was also a communal kitchen, but Elvis said he didn’t have access to it.  I don’t think he knows how to cook, anyway.  There was also a communal flower garden and corn patch in the courtyard. [read on]

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What the hell is a bus terminal usage fee?

Tuesday, March 21st, 2006

I waited until 1:00 for Alejandro, but he never showed up so I went into the city myself.  Santa Cruz seemed much richer and cosmopolitan than anything I’d seen for a while…the houses were larger, fenced in, people drove Land Rover-type SUVs, and there were shops like GAP and Victoria’s Secret (Secretos de Victoria).  The city was cute, but was almost a bit much…the differences between the rich and the poor were striking.  There were your traditional women with apron and skirt, long braided hair, but also your typical urban material-loving faction, the latter owning the heart of the city. [read on]

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Little Happy Clapping Den

Monday, March 20th, 2006

I woke up the next morning with the feeling that we were in the home stretch…I was told we would arrive sometime that night, which would prove interesting since the port was a ways away from town and, supposedly, getting a taxi or some sort of mobility (as it was called) would be difficult, if not impossible at night.  I had breakfast and went back to my hammock, where I was stung five times by some sort of hornet or wasp…once in the foot, twice in the boob, and twice in the stomach.  Dammit!  Agh!  At least it was sunny again…I laid and slept in my hammock most of the morning and rinsed out some clothes in the river in the afternoon, the sun drying them quicker than you can imagine. [read on]

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Still on the boat…

Sunday, March 19th, 2006

Somehow we managed to avoid rain the whole night.  Breakfast was fritos (fried flour and cheese) and coffee.  Around 10am, it started raining…first it was just a little…tarp maintenance was pretty important.  Since the rain accumulates on the tarp, you have to use a stick or some sort of implement and poke the rain off.  So, we stood there, under our tarps, maintaining them for a while.  I watched one guy, Rodney, fill his cup from the tarp run-off and drink it (I later found out this is where our drinking water came from…I was told it was better than the water from the river).  Then came the wind.  A huge gust of wind blew nearly all the tarps from their secure positions…mine ripped down the middle as I was trying to get the water off of it.  People started running to shelter on the main boat, children, cushions, clothes in hand…it was crazy. [read on]

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Settling in to my new life on a cargo boat

Saturday, March 18th, 2006

On the boat, I staked out a spot under a truck…it was a low-rider, and would prove to be interesting. Valentin offered to go buy me a tarp, but everything was closed for lunch. The boat didn’t leave for a few hours, and we eventually found a place that was open, so I did get some tarp. On the boat, Valentin and my new neighbor, Miller, helped me hang it up…I scrapped the under-the-truck idea and found an open area to hang my hammock, with tarp overhead, and extension of a row of tarp. This would be my little home for the next 6 days, rain or shine. [read on]

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Bolivia, you are everything I ever wanted in a travel partner

Thursday, March 16th, 2006

So, I was extremely nervous to go to Bolivia…weird. I reluctantly walked to the dock and bought my ticket to cross the river into Bolivia. The boat pulled right up, I got on, and we crossed. A man exchanging money waved me over and told me to sit. I sat, thanking him, probably in Portuguese. He asked here I was from, and I answered, all the time fumbling through my Spanish/Portuguese mix. He was extremely nice…answered all my questions about where the immigration office was and how I could get out of Guayaramirim, all while complementing my Spanish (hilarious, but nice words of encouragement). I thanked him as he shook my hand and pointed me in the direction of immigration. [read on]

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A few last notes on Brazil

Thursday, March 16th, 2006

I was headed back to Porto Velho. We stopped in the next big town and I was told we had 20 minutes, so I got off to grab a bite to eat. As I was standing there, our bus pulled off, so I ran after it, but they waved over in some direction, as if to indicate everything is ok. I assumed the bus was getting cleaned, but then got nervous when the bus never came back and everyone started to get on another bus. I had pretty much come to terms with the fact that I had lost everything I had (except the important stuff, which I had on me), and thought, well, maybe this is a good thing…I don’t need all that stuff anyway. However, I was quite relieved to find out everything had been transferred to the new bus. Why go with nothing if you don’t need to? [read on]

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