The Muddy-Pants Diaries

11 November 2005 (Friday) – La Paz, Bolivia

I had checked out of my hostel, left my backpack in the storage and headed out for my usual breakfast of salteña and fruit juice by the market. But gosh, today’s weather was just so hot. I soon had no choice but to return back to the hostel and apply sun-block over my face. La Paz’s weather is really crazy. One day it is extremely hot, and the next, it rains cats and dogs.

Yesterday, I was supposed to meet Alexis, a guy whom I had contacted through Hospitality Club, in the late afternoon. However, repeated calls to his cellular phone yielded just a message. I believed his phone had run out of batteries. In a way, I was glad I did not meet him yesterday. Otherwise, I would have missed the session with Maestro Crespo.

Anyway, today, he wrote to me telling me that he would like to invite me to watch a celebration at the school he is working at, there would be folkloric dances from all over Bolivia… TOMORROW. Argh, I had already bought a ticket for Cochabamba leaving TONIGHT.

As I really wanted to watch this celebration, I decided… why not, I would stay another day. I walked to the bus terminal, had the ticket changed and returned to my hostel to re-check-in. We made an appointment to meet at Plaza San Francisco tomorrow morning. Great!

Meanwhile, as my curiosity of coca leaves had understandably grown due to the fortune-telling session of yesterday, I headed to Museo de la Coca, a tiny little museum about coca leaves. We were issued notebooks of our preferred language and told to read them as we walk from panels to panels to view the corresponding photos.

Wow, coca leaves have been in used by the people of this land for 4,500 years, as traces of the leaves were found in mummies from 2,500 BC to 1,800 BC. It was later condemned by clergymen after the Spanish conquests. They called the plant a Devil’s plant, in their attempt to try and convert the indigenous people to Catholicism.

But, it was later discovered that chewing coca leaves increased the output from silver miners (they could just last much longer hours). When Potosi was as important a city as many European cities of its times, due to its riches from silver mining, the Spanish conquerors decided to unban coca leaves and let them be used by these Indian slaves who work in infernal conditions. Of course, the Spanish controlled them carefully and at one point, the value of coca leaves was equal to the price of 450kg of gold!

Later, the anaesthetic effects of coca leaves were discovered by the Western World (although well-known by pre-Inca civilisations centuries ago who used them to perform skull trepanations – drilling a hole through the skull to perform brain surgery), so it became the fashion drug. Cocaine, a derivative from coca leaves, was later fashionably used in French wine and the most famous brand in the world – Coca Cola as an energy-booster.

Yatiri (a witch-doctor) is a person who reads coca leaves as he introduces himself to the spirits and observes the past, present, future, health and illness of the person who consults him. Unfortunately, there are not many people who knows how to read coca leaves anymore. (Boy, am I lucky to have found Maestro Crespo!) Coca leaves are the divine connection between the Andean Gods and the earthly world. Much like a type of wine that people sip in churches to be connected with the Western God.

So, coca was used by the Western world, in mines and by the spiritual world.

Later, United Nations claimed that coca leaves was the cause of poverty in Bolivia and Peru, thereby creating a law that prohibited it.

Naturally, cocaine soon became a societal problem with drug addicts all over the world as well. For example, according to the museum, United States has 5% population but consumes 50% of cocaine that exists in the world.

Fittingly, there was an extract from Bolivian writer Antonio Diaz Villemal, who wrote ‘Legends from My Land’:

“I shall give you a gift for your brothers
Climb up to that mountain
Where you shall find a small plant
One with much strength
Guard the leaves with much care
And when you feel the sting of pain in your heart
Hunger in your body
And darkness in your mind.
Take them in your mouth
And softly draw up its spirit
Which is part of mine
You will find love for your pain,
Food for your body
And light for your mind.
Furthermore, watch the leaves dance with the wind
And you will find answers to your queries

But if you torturer, who comes from the north,
The white conquerer, the gold seeker should touch it
He will find in it only poison for his body
And madness for his mind,
For his heart so callous as his steel and iron garment
And when the coca, which is how you will call it,
Attempts to soften his feelings,
It will only shatter him as ice crystals
Born in the clouds, crack the rocks and demolish mountains.”

Apparently, now there are 36 countries who have rights to produce cocaine (presumably for medical purposes) but Peru and Bolivia were not amongst them.

All thoroughly interesting…

By the time I left the museum, I had no choice but to head back to my hostel yet another time, to pile on more clothes. I just realised I am wearing my alpaca sweater from Bolivia, my woolly hat from Venezuela, my gloves from Colombia, my thick purple scarf from Chile, my thinner orange scarf from Ecuador! Wait, I am missing something from Peru. Well, my finger puppets of a llama and a condor would have to do. Wow… I couldn’t be more Pan-American.

At about 8+pm, when I had just, by pure chance, returned home, the sky opened up and poured torrential rain! Gosh, one really needs to be prepared from solar to rain attacks here all in one day in La Paz!

10 November 2005 (Thursday) – La Paz, Bolivia

Henry started packing his things as he may or may not leave La Paz today. He would know the answer in 2 hours’ time when Emmanuelle tells him HER travel plans, heh. He was still keen to see the fortune teller Maestro Simon Crespo, as the maestro had come highly recommended by his friend back in Lima, who had lived here in La Paz for a long time.  We headed to the maestro‘s place at around noon. Unfortunately, he was not around and his wife told us he would be back by 2pm.

Henry and I agreed to meet back here at that time. Meanwhile, I wandered all over La Paz again.  I returned to the Witches’ Market and inquired about the talismans.  Gosh, this for health, this to protect the house, this for prosperity, this for love, this for good luck, etc…  I need one of everything!

Unfortunately, at 2pm, Maestro Crespo was still not around. Emmanuelle was leaving for Sucre this evening with her family. I wanted to buy a bus ticket for Cochabamba tomorrow and Henry wanted to buy a ticket as well. But to where, he was not sure yet.

Well, his original objective (wow, it sounds so long ago but it was just last Saturday) had been to pass through Bolivia as quickly as possible to get to Buenos Aires. Then, when he saw pictures of Salar de Uyuni, he contemplated on heading to Uyuni, although the cost of the tour would be a problem to his budget. I had asked him how many kidneys he has… it is an option to consider. And well, it is still possible to see Salar de Uyuni with one eye… how much is a cornea worth on the market?

But now, with Emmanuelle in the picture, he was seriously thinking of going to Sucre!

Anyway, we headed to the bus terminal and bought our respective tickets and yep, he bought the one for Sucre.

In the late afternoon, we returned again to Maestro Crespo’s place and this time, he was in, but with a customer. When we explained to Emmanuelle that Maestro Crespo reads the future with coca leaves, Emmanuelle was game to try as well. But as her Spanish was impossible, I had to go in with her to help with interpretation.

Oh no… Maestro Crespo spoke with a thick accent and, as in telling the future, he used a lot of future tense and subjunctive tense which I am terrible at! I mean, half the time, I was talking in past and present tenses. And if I ever speak of the future, I use ‘going to’ – ‘voy a’ / ‘va a’ / ‘vamos a’. As for subjunctive, my Spanish teacher in Singapore had refused to teach us, saying that it was too difficult for us to understand and we would never use it in the markets. But hello… now I need it at the fortune teller! I had self-studied the subjunctive tense, but it was a struggle for me. So, I was trying really hard to understand him. Also, when I tried to ask him to repeat something I did not understand, he did not try to paraphrase, he simply repeated the same words… not even more slowly. It was difficult.

And it did not help that most of what he had to say for Emmanuelle’s future were rather bad news. Emmanuelle looked really shaken as she listened to what I translated and I was really afraid of mistranslating. Maestro Crespo asked if we had been to Isla del Sol or Tiahuanacu. We had been to both. Well, it was a pity, as he said if Emmanuelle could get 2 pieces of rock shaped like triangles from Isla del Sol, she could help rectify her future problems. How about Valle de la Luna? Well, she was leaving La Paz in an hour’s time. So, in the end, he suggested another method for her to do at home back in France.

She really had to go, so I bade her a hurried farewell and she left… looking very sad and shaken. I wanted to have mine read as well, although I was a little afraid of what bad news I would get, having witnessed Emmanuelle’s case.

First, Maestro Crespo asked me to say my name out loud. Then, on the piece of cloth covering the coca leaves, he did some incantations. When he opened the cloth, he placed a few leaves at certain positions and then held a bunch on his right hand and let the leaves fall. Based on where they fell, he proceeded to tell me about my future, my love life, my job, what I should be aware of, about my health (he mentioned that I ought to be careful with my legs as I was always involved in accidents and this was so TRUE!!!). On the whole, everything sounded great, thank goodness. I asked some specific questions about myself, my friends and my family and his answers all sounded very definite. And I must say, I really respected what he had to say as he described certain characters rather accurately.

Well, I paid and left and it was Henry’s turn. He gave me the evil eye, as both of us had taken quite a long time. But, gosh… what was I to do? I did not understand Maestro Crespo so well. Outside were several ladies waiting and I asked them if the maestro was famous and they all agreed he was, saying that he was very accurate. Wow… my head was still reeling from what he had told me.

When Henry was done, we shared a bit of what Maestro Crespo told us. He was totally blown away as well, because the first thing Maestro Crespo said of his health was his busted knees. How true. Then, Henry really had to go. He got his bags ready, hugged me tightly as we had become good friends by now, made promises to catch up in Buenos Aires, and caught a taxi to the bus terminal. And then, there was ONE – me.

Tonight in my hostel, I found my other roommates to be 2 Korean guys and 1 Japanese guy. Well well well, here we are… Little Asia.

9 November 2005 (Wednesday) - La Paz, Bolivia By last night, Henry and Emmy had gotten all lovey-dovey, and I appeared to be quite a bright lamp-post, heh. So, I was happy to leave them alone today to their own dreamland ... [Continue reading this entry]

8 November 2005 (Tuesday) - La Paz to Tiahuanacu to La Paz, Bolivia Diego, the eternal Indian chief, was trying to organise the group today to go to Tiahuanacu. I told him Henry and I were heading off separately and ... [Continue reading this entry]

7 November 2005 (Monday) - Isla del Sol to Copacabana to La Paz, Bolivia Indeed Henry was not killed by hailstones last night and I got my torch back, hehee... [Continue reading this entry]

6 November 2005 (Sunday) - Copacabana to Isla del Sol, Bolivia Lake Titicaca, the highest commercially navigable lake in the world, is shared between Peru and Bolivia. I had previously visited the Uros Floating Islands, made of reed, and ... [Continue reading this entry]

5 November 2005 (Saturday) - Puno, Peru to Copacabana, Bolivia

I had stayed at the terminal so as to make it easier to catch the early morning bus. It turned out, the bus made its rounds around the centre to the ... [Continue reading this entry]