From Argentina to Bolivia

All new pics of dave’s Sketchbook are here:

Pics of our Southern Bolivia Tour are here:

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Erin’s Jungle Trek

I said goodbye to Dave and Dan and was on my own. Happy and nervous that my decision to trek into the mountains with a stranger guide was, shall we say, stupid. My guide, Rafael, showed up, and he seemed to be more or less normal. The Jungle we trekked into was gorgeous. We spoke in Spanish the whole time, which was great. He knew a ton about plants, especially trees. In this jungle, there were cacti growing on lush trees and trees with huge thorns. We climbed and climbed getting amazing views of the valley. He brought great food. Then it started raining, heavily, and it didn’t stop until we got back to the parking lot the next afternoon. A detail Rafael forgot was to waterproof my sleeping bag. It was wet. So there we were, Rafael and I in his little tent, in our wet sleeping bags, for HOURS. He was feeling social and I just wanted to be quiet and introspective. He hit on me a little. I talked about Dave and his wonders a lot. It was soooo awkward. On the bright side, he cooked great food, brought a lot of chocolate and we camped next to this beautiful little adobe house that farmers used to live in. It is amazing to me that people live so remotely. The view when I poked my head out of the tent was gorgeous cloud forest as well. When I woke up, I was ready to GTFO. The sun came out when we reached the bottom of the mountain and I soaked it in gratefully. I enjoyed pure alone time for the rest of the day. It was great when Dan showed up and we ended up drinking lots of matte with our speedy Argentine Mami, Vilma and then going out to dinner with a fun and friendly Argentine from Buenos Aires. At the restaurant, with great live music, I realized just how much I love the friendly culture of this beautiful country. I look forward to returning with more time and money.

Entrance to Bolivia

Hi everyone, this is a rare Erin entry. I just spoke with my dad last night and heard my aunt Laura Jean and cousin Christine are reading this. Hi guys!!! I send you a big hug.

I get to write about our entrance into Bolivia and our time in the Altiplano, which is a region of Bolivia that sits around 14,000 ft. From that high altitude, even higher volcanoes and mountains arise. It is spectacular and remote. From the moment we entered Bolivia, we were entranced. It is sooo unique and very different from Argentina. The people all have a ton of indigenous blood and are much more reserved than Argentines. It is a much poorer country economically and a rich country culturally. The people usually speak one of 3 different Inca languages as well as Spanish. The women, especially the older women, wear unique traditional dress, with a bowler hat, long (down to the knees), decorated triensas (braids) lots of sweaters and a puffy skirt. My favorite is how they carry their babies and grandkids in a brightly woven blankets slung to their backs. They are hard to photograph, but we were strategic and got some good shots.

Dave’s drawings are rad also.

Dave and I met in N. Argentina, after our only 2 days apart, and bused to the border together. It was great to see his sweet face and fun to share stories. After the usual confusing, stressful and expensive (thanks George f’ing Bush) border crossing, we got on the coolest train, winding thru red rock, river desert canyons, valleys growing unique veggies in neat rows. I can’t believe how extremely beautiful this country and its people are.

We arrived in a small high (10,000 ft) desert town, Uyuni, at midnite. I had a headache at first, but used the local cure of coca leaves to relieve it. You suck on them and are cured of many maladies. The Bolivian president, Evo Morales, used to be a coca farmer. The indigenous treat it separately from the cocaine you can make out of it. It is a big political thing, because the US tries to fight what the indigenous hold as an important part of their culture. You would be amazed at the puffy cheeks with mouths full of coco leaves everywhere with brown and twisted or missing teeth.

We arranged a tour with 4×4’s through the vast salt flats, to desert lagoons, and to climb Lincancabur volcano, which rises to 18,000 feet. It was a totally amazing tour, a highlight of the trip. At the beginning we were packed into the 4×4 with 5 other extraneros, who were super cool. I expected to be surrounded by other tourists, so it didn’t bother me so much to be on a popular tour. One of our fellow tourists was a professional photographer, Mustafa, and it was so fun to watch him get all crazy taking pics; and were psyched to get some great shots he took of us with his phat camera.

Overall it was great just to make some friends again. Every night we stayed in these really basic hostels, no showers for 5 days, and sharing them with 6 people per room and 30 people per toilet (which were nasty and without soap). We ate and slept together and became a team. The last morning, our whole team, except magically Dave and I, were sick as dogs and Dave and I became nurses. This was at 4 in the morning, in darkness, where only us had headlamps. We are such strong stomached travel professionals. It was great to be prepared and tough enough to support others. And now we have a date in NYC to eat good, home cooked food with our new friends. On the journey we saw and took pics of breathtaking salt flats, green and red lagoons, flamingos, ostriches, lots of running llamas and vecunas, bubbling and steaming geysers, high snow covered mountains, deep canyons and red rock desert.

The towns we stayed in were so tiny and built of earth. They blended into the brown desert. With this backdrop the brightly adorned women, llamas and sheep looked stunning.

 

Volcan Lincancabur

A highlight of the trip came when we said goodbye to all our tourist friends (I am writing right now on my laptop in a little mountain town’s main square and the kids are surrounding me curiously; they have never touched a computer, much less seen a laptop.) We ended up the sole tourists in a family run hostel in the vast and remote desert. We rested and enjoyed a practice walk along the green lagoon at 14,000ft. It was flurrying snow horizontally in the strong wind, to my delight. We played with the kids and taught our traditional indigenous guide, Pedro, liars dice. We got up at 3 am the next day to kick ass on the highest climb of our lives, Volcan Lincancabur. We were prepared for a 6 hour climb and a 2 hour decent with water, coca tea, bread, eggs and Dave’s treasured 2 cliff bars. We were afraid we’d be hungry, but with the altitude, we ended up only drinking the tea gratefully and forcing a cliff bar down. Starting out in the freezing, star filled sky was amazing and adventurous. .Pedro started walking so slowly, something I would only later understand. As the sky lighted slightly, I could only make out a huge black slope ahead of me and the shimmering lagoon below. I had been really afraid of scaling the side and getting afraid of heights, but it never got hairy in that way. After a few hours, it got light and the air got really thin. Every step was a huge effort and I was grateful for Pedro’s slow motion walking. Dave and I were going through bouts of nausea. Mine got worse with every step. I had to push myself sooo hard. I set a goal of making it to a certain rock. We reached it after about 5 hours. Dave’s love for me shone in his support during my physical difficulty. He was rocking out. I decided to not go any further and wait for their return from the top, a really hard decision. I decided to not think of it as a failure, instead to relish being perched on the upper level of a majestic volcano, with a view beyond the imagination.

My favorite was the ice cascades around me. After passing out hard core for an undetermined amount of time, I sat on a rock, with nothing below me and had a powerful meditation session. When Dave and Pedro returned, victorious and smiling, it was wonderul! What a high! To descend we kinda skied down the scree, not Dave’s (with his long legs and bad knees) favorite activity, but I liked it and Pedro was like Speedy Gonzales. Every little bit we descended, I felt better. Phew, high altitude can work the body!!!! It was great to return home to our hostel to hang with our guide, Pedro, and his family.

Dave and I had a hard time walking for a few days, but will always remember that adventure. We had a great trip back to Uyuni with our wonderful guides, Luis and our cook, Eufronia (who was about 3 ft tall). We encouraged them to eat with us and made a point to make these sweet Bolivians our friends. It is really hard to connect with Bolivians we have found, so this was really special.

(note the height differential)