Tainted Times and a Tiahuanaco Tour

August 9, 2009

I’d returned to La Paz on a Saturday and wanted to check out the city’s club scene that night. I went out with a group of people from my hostel and it was fun for awhile. But I quickly noticed that a large chunk of La Paz’s gringo party crowd were not people I wanted to associate with. La Paz, even more than Cusco, attracts a crowd that is there for the sole purpose of partying hard. They’re the kind of people who give 20-something backpackers a bad name.

Two of my of my roommates that night were part of that crowd. They were the most obnoxious ones I’ve ever had in a hostel. One, who had regurgitated her dinner before even having a chance to go out, passed out on a bed that didn’t even belong to her. She woke up in the middle of the night and decided it was a good time to have a long conversation with a random person in the room while the rest of us were trying to sleep. That is just a small glimpse of the night. I love nightlife, but I really don’t understand the need to be that extreme and travel thousand of miles to do nothing other than party. Needless to say, it was a sleepless night.

I’d signed up for a tour to Tiahuanaco on Sunday and could not bring myself down from my bunk that morning. I eventually did and tried to hurry, but I was still the last to get on the mini bus. I was late and I’d held everyone up. It doesn’t feel great to be that person in a group of complete strangers.

I shrugged it off because I had bigger problems than lack of sleep and being shunned by my tour group– I’d lost my ATM card. I think it must have happened at the ATM on Saturday afternoon, but I hadn’t noticed the card was missing until night when I was going out. It was late, so there was nothing I could do about it then.

It was a two hour drive to Tiahuanaco. We began our tour in a museum adjacent to the ruins. The tour guide was awful. He rambled on and on about trivial speculation. It was hard to follow him because he would sporadically switch between English and Spanish. After awhile, I got tired of pretending like I was listening to him. I found a chair and had a seat.

I was sympathetically approached by girl I’d noticed earlier. In her multicolored head-to-toe llama gringo gear, she was impossible to miss. She wore a llama wool hat with earflaps, a llama wool sweater, and striped pants that resembled pajamas that were tucked into combat boots with wool llama socks sticking out of the tops. These were all in neon shades blue, pink, green, etc. We chatted and she seemed as crazy as she looked, but it was cool that someone else was not into acting they were understanding what the guide was saying.

My Amazon tour guide had been great. He let us know what everything was, but didn’t go into much detail. He let us be in the moment. I knew I wouldn’t be able to enjoy Tihaunaco as much with the guide’s incessant talking. So when we reached the ruins, I decided to take off on my own. I reveled in the in the color combination of rust-colored ruins and brilliantly blue sky. I ran my fingers along ancient walls made of multi-sized bricks that created beautiful patterns. I looked into the eyes of stone carved faces that had long lost their detail. I imagined what looked like its inhabited days.

I eventually rejoined the group and maintained a safe distance from the guide. When everyone felt like they’d had enough of the ruins, we went for lunch at a restaurant nearby. I sat with the neon llama girl from England who’d approached me earlier, her French friend, and a Bolivian American guy. The two girls had met in Peru where they were supposed to volunteer. But Peru got worried about swine flu and closed all of the schools, so many people had to cancel their volunteering assignments. After that, they decided to travel together through Peru and Bolivia. The Bolivian-American was visiting relatives in the city of Cochabamba, and taking the opportunity to travel to other parts of Bolivia.

For lunch, we had a choice of chicken, beef or llama. I wanted to taste the llama but didn’t want to order it. The French girl let me try a piece of hers. It tasted like a cross between lamb and pork. We had a lively conversation over a long meal before heading back to La Paz.

Back in the city, we were dropped off at the Witches Market. I headed straight for an international call center to get in touch with my bank. The good news was that there were no extra charges on my account and I was able to cancel my card. The bad news was that there was no way I’d be able to get a new card before I left Bolivia. It was a Sunday so I’d have to wait until the next day to see if I could use my credit card to get a cash advance at a local bank.

The two girls I’d met on my Tihuanaco tour were staying at the same hostel and I met up with them to go out to dinner. The English girl had lost her ATM card as well, so our goal was to find something cheap to eat. I’d imagine we’d find a great local hole in the wall place, but we ended up on a street full of Bolivian fast food joints. We eventually settled on a place that seemed really crowded and like the place to be. On the menu were things like hot dogs, hamburgers, and popcorn chicken. There was a complicated ordering system that we didn’t understand. The workers saw that we were clueless and took pity on us and took care of us. We sat down to eat our burgers. I can’t say the food was tasty, but it was edible and didn’t give me food poisoning.

Back at the hotel, my obnoxious roommates had moved on and were replaced with two French women I’d seen on my bus from Puno to Copacabana. I slept soundly that night and hoped that I’d be able to resolve my monetary issues in the morning.

Wanderful Words No. 5

“Seeking out the rapture of being alive was what mattered to us. And if the world laughed at us for this, so what.”

- Laurie Gough, Kite Strings of the Southern Cross

Goodbye Amazon

August 7, 2009

In my daily life when I am rudely awoken by my alarm, I often forget that I am actually a morning a person. I’m not into the part of the morning full of mundane routines, but I am partial to the wee, tranquil hours of it. I love the slow transition from dark to dusk; it’s such a peaceful and hopeful time of day. Unfortunately, my 9ish to 5ish life does not allow for much sunrise viewing, so I take every sunrise opportunity that comes up when I travel.

Early on our last morning, our guide came to wake up those of us who wanted to see the sunrise. We kept the boat’s motor off so we could listen to the Amazon arise and enjoy the serenity of the misty river. Howler monkeys made a noise that sounded like amplified stomach growling. Dark trees were outlined by a colorful sky. When we reached our lookout point, we saw several flocks of birds flying over the emerging sun.

Back at the camp, we had breakfast before heading out for our last activity, swimming with the pink river dolphins. To me, the concept of swimming with wild dolphins is silly because I doubt they want to be swum with. But I went along for the ride because I’d heard you could see more dolphins in the morning. We did see a few more than we had in the previous days, but they are unpredictable creatures that come up and down quickly. We tried to anticipate where they would pop up next, but you just have to be lucky enough to be looking in the right direction at the right time.

Pink River Dolphins

 

We went back to the camp to pack up, have our last lunch, and  relax in the hammocks. Then it was time to get on the boat for the last time to make our way back to Rurrenabaque. I was looking forward to internet access and taking a nice long shower, but I was really going miss the whole sweaty and dirty Amazon experience. The boat felt like home at that point. Though the wonder of the first day had disappeared, it was still amazing to be on it and surrounded by so many different kinds of life. The camp, with its lack of electricity and water and modern amenities, had grown on me. It can be so nice to give up everything you think you need for a few days; it puts a lot of things into perspective.

When we arrived at the point where the jeep had dropped us off, there were several groups waiting to claim our boats and begin their river adventures. The available jeeps filled up quickly and we ended up having to wait for one that had two flat tires along the way. Two hours later, the jeep finally showed up. We said goodbye to our guide and eagerly piled in.

The driver was clearly as eager to get the drive over with as we were, so he drove like a maniac along the potholed road. It was an awful drive. I was crammed into a half-broken back seat with two of the Danish guys. The window next to me was stuck, so every time a large truck drove by, I was covered with a new layer of dirt.

After an hour or so, the driver stopped abruptly and I nervously imagined we had another flat tire. But he’d pulled over so we could see something crossing the road– a sloth! It was the most adorable and wonderful creature I’ve ever seen. It slowly moved its head from side to side as it inched across the road. The permanent smile it appeared to have was contagious. The strange creature was the perfect end to my wildlife adventure. And it also made me realize something about all the guides and drivers I’d come across. Though they lived in that area and ran tours all the time, they never seemed to lose their childlike excitement about seeing the animals and pointing them out to us. That was wonderful.

A sloth!

We made it back to the Indigena Tours office in Rurrenabaque in record time. Locals giggled at us as we emerged from the jeep enshrouded with dirt. I’m sure it was a scene they were used to and always drew much enjoyment from. I went back to Hostal Santa Ana where I’d stayed on my first night in Rurrenabaque, and they had a room ready for me. I went into a few showers before I found one that didn’t have a frog in it. Ever since I had a run in with a frog in a toilet bowl in Ghana one year, I’ve had a slightly unreasonable fear of frogs in bathrooms.

I took a long shower and then went to search for dinner. At a pizza restaurant, I bumped into the Belgian couple I’d met on the day I arrived in Rurrenabaque. I joined them for dinner and we exchanged stories about our tours. It seemed like their group was not full of athletic Iron Man types like mine and their anaconda experience was nowhere near as swampy. In fact, they’d found two anacondas in a very short period of time. After dinner, we headed to Rurrenabaque’s main backpacker night spot, the Jungle Bar Moskito. Most people had planned to meet up with their groups there. Eventually my group showed up, and many games and much fun ensued.

The next morning, I was sad to be heading back to the asthma-inducing high altitude city of La Paz. As much as I would have loved to stay in Rurrenabaque longer, I didn’t have the time. The Danish guys from my tour were on my flight again we caught the Amaszonas shuttle to the airport. There was no technology at the tiny airport to let us know our flight was delayed, so we just waited and waited. And the longer we waited, the more people approached us to pay taxes. I reluctantly handed over my Bolivianos for unknown taxes and went outside until the flight arrived to take us off to La Paz.

When I told some people who know me well about some of my Amazon experiences, one response was, “I can’t picture you doing that!” It’s true, I tend to be girlie and I’m not into getting dirty. But one of the greatest parts of traveling for me is stepping outside the physical, social, and cultural boundaries that I put up for myself at home. Who I am becomes open to modification. I look back in awe at that three day tour; I fufilled a childhood dream of visiting the Amazon and redefined what I can do.

Anaconda Hunting We Will Go

August 6, 2009

On some of my recent travels, I’ve found myself in unwitting situations where I wonder, “Where the hell am I and how did I get myself into this mess?” Anaconda hunting was a prime example of such a scenario.

When we arrived at our camp the day before, we picked out rubber boots that we would wear for the anaconda excursion. The only boots that really fit me went up mid-calf rather than up to the knee like the other ones. The guide said it didn’t matter because the mud would only come up to our ankles. As we left the following morning, a guy asked me if I’d thought about whether or not what the guide said was true. He had a point given the guides previous understatements, but it was too late because we’d already left.

The walk started off innocently enough with a little mud and some tall grass. But I soon found myself in the middle of the swamp and there was no turning back. With each step, I had no clue whether I was stepping on solid ground or what seemed like quicksand. As I alternated between unsuctioning my feet from the swamp and swatting branches out of my face, I began to question whether finding an anaconda was worth spending half a day with mud carrying unknown organisms creeping into my boots.

I eventually I fell into a stride and found that picking up the pace helped me avoid sinking into the mud. When possible, I stepped on dried grass or plants at the quicksandy patches. We crossed over a semi-dried up pond and bumped into another group who was staying at the same camp; some English college students and middle-aged Canadian couple. Their guide took off and we began to follow him, but then a group of us decided it wasn’t worth it to venture off into open land when the sun was so hot. We were very low on drinking water because we hadn’t imagined we’d be out there for so long.

This is what we spent the day looking for?!

We sat under a tree, and being still invited the creepy crawlies to climb all over us. Just as I jumped up when I found a spider on me, I heard some shouts. An anaconda had been found! Finally. We went to scope out the scene. The snake seemed lethargic and defenseless. It was obvious that it had just eaten something and you could see the outline of whatever it was digesting in it’s belly.

I was excited when people were done with the snake and we started to head back to camp. But then, a huge wasp came out of nowhere and stung me on the shoulder. It hurt like hell and my head filled with thoughts of asphyxiation. My honeymoon phase with the Amazon had ended. It didn’t mean I loved it any less, but I’d accepted the realities of it. At first you stare at it with awe and wonder, but you eventually come face to face with all of its little pests.

My boots contained miniature swamps by that point. With every step, my feet were sloshing around inside them. My guide felt bad for me and we stopped at a stream where he helped me empty my boots and rinse off my socks.

We fell way behind everyone, but eventually caught up with the Canadian couple from the other group. At that point, traversing the swamp had a become more of a mental battle than a physical one for me. My legs were propelling themselves forward independently. I was over the swamp, my mind was focused on decreasing the distance between myself and the camp. The sun was blazing overhead and there was no escaping the heat and humidity and I was completely out of water.

The Canadians kept falling behind because the woman would drop to her feet and cry every time she tripped. In the swamp, it’s easy to trip a lot. Their group’s guide was probably already back at the camp, and my guide obviously felt responsible for ensuring that they made it back safely. Every time we stopped to wait for them, both my feet and energy sunk and my mind wandered back to whether or not the wasp that stung me was poisonous. Maybe it sounds callous, but I wished the woman would pull it together. We were out in the tropical Bolivian wilderness, and there wouldn’t be a rescue helicopter coming anytime soon. And the longer we were out there, the more likely we would become dehydrated and get heatstroke.

I saw trees in the distance and figured it had to be our camp. I asked the guide to point me in the direction of the camp and took off by myself. I had a run-in with dehydration earlier in the year and I knew that I really needed to get some fluids in my system. On the way, I bumped into the guide from the other group who finally decided to come back and help out. He gave me a drink of water pointed me towards the path, but in the thick tall grass, I still got lost. I eventually heard someone frantically shouting my name, my guide coming to the rescue. I’d overshot the trail and had to go back a bit in the other direction.

When we finally got back to the camp, I immediately took off my boots and socks. My feet looked like raisins covered with melted chocolate. I chugged water and had lunch. Twenty to thirty minutes later, the Canadian couple showed up looking tired but fine. After lunch, I tried to wash the mud out of my clothing in the camp’s tiny sink. I took a long cold shower and found an empty to hammock to lie in and contemplate the day. As much as I’d not enjoyed the swamp experience, it was a good challenge. I’d done it very ungracefully, but I’d completed it and that made me happy.

The late afternoon brought a much more enjoyable activity– piranha fishing. I’d never been fishing before, but it always seemed like it would be interesting to try. I enjoyed being back on the boat. The river was more friendly and fun than the open lands, as long as you didn’t fall victim to a cayman. After several tries, I caught a small fish. It wasn’t a piranha, but that didn’t take away from my excitement about catching a fish for the first time.

We were budget fishing and our rods were handmade. They consisted of just a hook, fishing wire, and a stick. The hooks kept getting stuck on trees or ripped off by piranhas. We headed back to camp when we ran out of supplies and bait. We only came away with three piranhas, all caught by our guide.

The evening was similar to the previous one. First there was a stop at the Sunset Bar. Back at the camp we had dinner, which included the three piranhas our guide caught. There is not a lot of meat on them, but they are tasty little fish. After dinner, the cooks brought us wine and a strange delicious concoction made of fruit and cookies that resembled a cake. I’m not sure if we were celebrating the second and last night of the tour or Bolivian Independence Day. Maybe both. There were no daily parades in the jungle so I’d forgotten it was Independence Day. We played cards by flashlight after the power went out. For some reason, the mosquitos were even more vicious that night than they were the previous night. My shoulder already had a swollen bump the diameter of a baseball where I’d been stung. I was tired of bugs and wanted to get up early for the sunrise, so I went back to our room early and settled into my mosquito net covered oasis.

Wanderful Words No. 4

“We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

- John Steinbeck

Caymans and Monkeys and Capybara, Oh My!

August 5, 2009

The first day of my wildlife excursion had arrived. I checked out of my hostel and bumped into a Belgian couple I’d met on the plane the day before. They’d also booked a pampas (wetland savannah) tour with Indigena Tours. I joined them for breakfast and we excitedly anticipated the day to come. We headed over to the Indigena office and it was completely packed with people ready to begin their tours. I guess that’s what a Lonely Planet recommendation can do for a business.

A caravan of dirt-covered jeeps arrived and we loaded our stuff onto them. In my group were three Danish guys I’d met on the plane, two Danish girls, an Israeli guy, and an English guy. I wasn’t too sure about being in a predominantly Danish group, but it was much better than being with the young Chilean girls they originally put me with. I don’t have anything against Chileans, but I didn’t want to be stuck with a group of seven chatty girls who already knew each other and would be speaking another language nonstop.

Our first wildlife sighting, a snake on the side of the road

We met our guide, Juan Carlos, and crammed into our well-worn jeep to begin our journey. A few minutes outside of Rurrenabaque, we drove over a bumpy stretch of broken cobblestone road. I asked Juan Carlos if it would be like that the whole way. He said it wouldn’t. He failed to mention that it would be worse. We spent hours on a dirt road trying to dodge potholes and the occasional snake. There were plenty unavoidable dips in the road that sent us flying out of our seats. There were definitely no seat belts; you were lucky just to have a seat that wasn’t broken.

By the time we reached our lunch stop by the river, our bottoms were numb and those of us seated in the front were covered with a layer of dust. My hair had been given dirt brown highlights. The people in the back were not as dusty, but their legs got a mud bath when a drive through a puddle revealed a hole in the floor of the Jeep. We had been treated to an Amazonian spa package.

But the rough part of the day was the drive, now it was time to sit back and enjoy the rest of it. When we arrived at our lunch spot, the cooks explained in Spanish if that we had a choice of chicken or fish and asked us what we wanted to drink. I got the gist of it and responded, “pollo, por favor.” Somehow, this led to me being seen as the Spanish speaker of the group. Suddenly, I was in charge of ordering for everyone with the few words and phrases I knew. Something to be said for traveling solo is that it forces you to learn how to communicate in whatever way possible. You have only yourself to get your point across.

After lunch, we went down by the river where we loaded our boats and went off to see the animals. There were caymans lurking in the river, keeping an eye on us. Other alligators stood on the shore with sinister eyes and wide-open mouths that looked ready to chomp on anything that came near. We saw one cute little squirrel monkey, and before long, several mischievous monkeys jumped on the boat and then onto us. Families of capybara, the world’s largest rodents, looked blankly into the distance as they chomped on dirt. Turtles were piled onto branches and then dropped into the water as we went by. There were birds in their nests high up in barren tree branches. Egrets perched on the riverbank and spread their graceful wings to fly away when we got close.

Squirrel Monkey

Capybara

This boat ride definitely did not disappoint. One of the Danish guys asked me, “Do they put a fence around this place to keep the animals in?” We were in awe of the amount of animals we’d seen in their natural habitat. I felt like I had spent the afternoon in a PBS documentary.

We arrived at our camp in the early evening. It was far from “eco-luxe” and consisted of bare wooden structures on stilts with walkways to get from one building to the next. Inside our cabin were beds about a foot apart with mosquito nets hanging over them. There were two bathrooms for 24 travelers, 3 guides, and the family who ran and lived at the camp. The best part of the camp was the hammock room. It overlooked the river and was surround by netting to allow for a nice breeze while keeping the pesky mosquitoes out.

After settling in, we went off to the Sunset Bar where there was something for everyone– playing volleyball or soccer, sipping a cold cerveza, and/or watching the sunset. The sunset started off ordinarily enough, but soon after the sun disappeared, the dark blue sky was filled with extraordinary rays of peach light.

We went back to our camp to have dinner and then went off in the boat again. With a flashlight, you can see the little dots which are the eyes of caymans. But it’s so dark that you don’t see much, so I found it much more interesting to look up at the luminous starry sky.

Back at the camp, the English guy and the Israeli guy went off to lounge in the hammocks. I joined the Danish people in the dining room to play cards and chat. They tried as much as possible to speak in English, but often relapsed into Danish. But cards and competition are international languages and the game they taught me was really fun. The camp’s power generator went off at 9 or 10pm, but we turned on our flashlights and kept playing. I went to bed fairly early to rest up for the next day’s anaconda search. Little did I know that no amount of rest could prepare me for that adventure.

5 Travel Memoirs by Women

The air is getting chilly and the rainy season has begun. My typical urge to fly south for the winter has kicked in. Unfortunately, travel is not an option for me at the moment, so I will hibernate instead. To me, that means curling up with a hot beverage and a travel memoir so I can live vicariously through someone else’s adventures.

I’m partial to travel memoirs written by women rather than men because I can usually relate to both their outward and inner journeys more. I have found a few good options beyond the ubiquitous Eat, Pray, Love. Here are some suggestions:

Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World
by Rita Golden Gelman

During an impending divorce, Rita Golden Gelman made her first solo journey to Mexico. This trip transforms her and she makes the decision to give up everything to become a global nomad. It’s encouraging to see the author evolve from a timid traveler to a confident adventurer ready to take on the world.

Adventure Divas: Searching the Globe for Women Who Are Changing the World
by Holly Morris

In this memoir, Holly Morris shares the details of the creation of the “Adventure Divas” PBS television series. It highlights powerful and unconventional women in several countries who are doing amazing things for their communities. It will inspire you to travel and make positive changes in the world.

Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure
by Sarah MacDonald

After Sarah MacDonald first traveled to India in her early 20s, she vowed to never return again. Several years later, her boyfriend takes a job in India and she decides to join him. This is a hilarious and insightful account of the two years she spent in India dabbling in various aspects of the culture and learning to accept the country as it is.

Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik: One Woman’s Solo Misadventures Across Africa
by Marie Javins

In this travel memoir, Marie Javins goes boldly where few travelers have gone before. While it was not the most poetic read, the author still managed to draw me in with tales of her exciting off the beat path adventures in Southern and Eastern Africa.

Kite Strings of the Southern Cross: A Woman’s Travel Odessy
by Laurie Gough

Maybe it’s wrong to recommend this book as I haven’t finished reading it yet. But so far I’ve found it to be a wonderfully descriptive and passionate account of traveling in the South Pacific and South East Asia, and I’m excited to continue reading it.

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They say it’s an El Nino year, so it looks like it’s going to be a long, wet winter. I may be doing quite a bit of armchair travel in the next few months. Suggestions for other travel memoirs are welcome!